


New World, New Rules

by Wreybies



Series: The Expansive Omegaverse [2]
Category: The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Play, Anal Sex, Bears, Belly Kink, Explicit Sexual Content, Flagrant use of..., Fluff and Smut, M/M, Magical Healing Cock, Mating Bond, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mpreg, None of that slow burn nonsense, Omegaverse, Penis Size, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Pregnant Sex, Sex right out the gate, Shameless Smut, Size Difference, Size Kink, my first ever alpha/omega, the eXXXpanse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-08 02:12:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 27,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17377616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wreybies/pseuds/Wreybies
Summary: The protomolecule has worked its alien magic on Amos and James and the pair seeks refuge with the Rocinante crew down the rabbit hole of a ring gate. James cradles within his belly the spark of new life and slipping by the Free Navy and Medina Station does not go unnoticed. New friends are made, old friends return, more than a few noses get bent, and as always the Universe has its own plans for James Holden and those in his orbit.---------------------A|Ω - A|U that departs from canon at a soft spot somewhere around (and partially in place of) Nemesis Games.Being the continuation ofA Rocinante X-MasImages look best when viewed with the Reversi site skin, but it's not a necessity.





	1. Clarrisa Mao

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [FWU_2019_Jan_New_Beginnings](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/FWU_2019_Jan_New_Beginnings) collection. 



> Feedback is the lifeblood of any author! Tell me what you thought, what you liked, what you didn't, what you hope to see! I don't bite, I swear. ;)

 

**January 27th**

The _Rocinante_ was beautiful in a terrible kind of way. Small, blunt, mean, efficient, without the slightest hint of guile or pretense that she was anything other than a machine of death. Her gunmetal and orange paint scheme made her look like a tremendous hornet with a belly-mounted railgun for a stinger. She had her own elegance, one made of profound practicality and concern for precision that was the hallmark of any Martian ship.

Clarissa Mao liked that very much. She liked the honesty with which the little corvette-class frigate greeted her on the array of haphazardly arranged screens in her tiny cockpit. That kind of honesty was a rare commodity.

That ship had dealt death, sure enough, and so had Clarissa, beyond all shadow of a doubt, so they were two of a kind, these two ladies floating in the unreal other-space of the slow zone.

Clarissa’s own ship was a sad little chunk of rock-hopper steel, as dirty and rough as they came, barely more than a box with an Epstein drive strapped to the back, utterly unlike the ships _cum_ hotels she had known in her youth, but the _Pashang Fong_ was hers, and very few could speak about ships in the possessive in this place where Medina Station reigned supreme, her ironic origins now cleanly swept behind a wall of history much greater than her slowly rotating bulk. No one would ever care how and why the _Nauvoo_ had come into being. Only the story of the _Behemoth_ and how she had become Medina Station would survive on the lips of the people. The _Nauvoo_ and her story would forever be a footnote.

She held down the comms button. “ _Rocinante, ketim ora xush du sherú?_ ”

A moment passed and then the comms clicked back, the tail end of someone’s chuckle puffing breathily through the speaker. “You tell me, Claire. The Roci’s been a dry county for some time now.”

“ _Na gif fo mi na kaka_ , Alex. A dry county? The Roci? Since when?”

“That’s part of a bigger conversation, Clarissa. How ‘bout you pull that hunk’o junk alongside and we can have ourselves a _razgovor_.”

She winced at how terrible Lang Belta sounded through Alex’s exaggerated cowboy drawl, on top of his use of words that had long ago fallen out of fashion. Poor guy. He never quite knew how to pinpoint the line between trying and trying too hard. Not a bad guy, not bad-looking, but his poorly aimed efforts smelled too often like desperation.

“This hunk’a junk can just turn around, you know. It’s not like I don’t have shit to do, and I do believe it was you all that sent the invitation.” She hoped there wasn’t too much sting in her voice, but enough to convey the idea that, hunk’o junk or not, it was her hunk’o junk and no one was going to trash-talk it.

“No offense intended, Ms. Mao. Docking cycle is engaged and awaiting your connection.”

She tea-kettled into place, locking the two ships together. The _Rocinante_ was a small ship, but the _Pashang Fong_ was tiny next to her, just a wee little crab-shaped louse against the Roci’s intimidating collection of black and orange planes, angles, and a host of emotionless armament currently at rest, looking as harmless as any gun can ever possibly manage.

Grapples locked and the heavy o-ring sealed the two ships together against the preternaturally blue void outside. She opened the ancient hatch on her side to be greeted by the infinitely more elegant doors of the Rocinante’s docking port.

When they slid open, the face on the other side was big and scary and friendly and familiar - Amos Burton.

In a different life - one that seemed a million years in the past, but was actually measured in mere months - she had held a flame for this man, and she had been fairly certain he had held one for her too. But it never resolved, never moved in a direction that made sense to her. She realized one day that there was a powerful drive in Amos to protect the small and the weak. She had mistaken that drive for a different kind of affection, but she wasn’t one to go chasing prey that neither ran away nor responded to being chased, and she wasn’t remotely comfortable with the idea of being seen as small and weak.

And so the flame she held for him had gone out.

Almost.

They had parted amicably, and much to the relief of James Holden, who had never quite gotten over the solar-system-spanning plan she had put together to end his life, which, in retrospect was obviously fair enough on his part. She was happy to find a place on Medina Station where there were very few clean hands and everyone keen to wash their own if possible. Here she could play out the end of her life without fear of too much judgment, and even when it came, all that was typically required was the pretense that you had the dirt on the other person, because everyone had some, and many had quite a bit.

But seeing Amos again, that big goofy smile of his, those eyes that were beautiful to her because they were kind, the flush came unbidden, her cheeks flaring, thankfully hidden by naturally dark complexion.

“Hey, Peaches,” he said warmly.

“Hey, you,” she responded, ducking her eyes as she floated past the junction of the two ships, lest she hold his too long. “So, what’s going on?”

“Same old, same old.”

“ _Kewe kowlting ando go, ówala?_ ”

“Oh, no. No, no, no.” Amos feigned shock. “You’ve gone native. Can’t associate with you no more.”

“ _Belta lik pashang, mi!_ ” She struck a microgravity, street-tough Belter pose far too young for her years, complete with a silly faux gangstack of her hands, which got Amos to laugh.

Amos’s soft chuckle faded into a smile that was shored up by a more serious tone. “All kidding aside, we’re kinda’ counting on the fact that you’ve gone Belter, Peaches. We need your help.”

“What else is new? What kinda’ help?” she asked.

“Well, it’s us of course, so… the kind of help that needs tight lips and a loose take on following the rules.”

“I figured as much, else you would have requested a more respectable boarding party.”

“Hey, birds of a feather…”

She smiled at that. Yes, birds of a feather. If James Holden needed her help enough to actually ask for it, then something intriguing was certainly afoot.

“So, where’s the captain?” she asked, all layers of the question implied through her tone.

“How ‘bout some coffee and we have a chat first,” Amos gestured to the ladder that led deeper into the ship, down to where she knew the canteen was located.

“Okay by me. You lot do have a taste for good coffee.” She pulled herself down the ladder, floating to the next section. “By the way, tell Alex no one says _razgovor_ anymore. Silly Martian. A chat or conversation is _du showxa_ or _dikución_ , never _razgovor_. Better yet, with that accent, tell him to just stick to English.”


	2. Captain James "Jim" Holden

 

When you are genuinely the focus of a complex, malicious conspiracy plot - ratified, certified, signed, sealed, and delivered - the physical presence of the author of said plot is a hard thing to get over.

Holden needed Clarissa Mao, and he had every reason to believe she knew it, but that didn’t mean they were going to be braiding one another’s hair any time soon. He had learned to tolerate her for Amos’s sake during her brief stint on the _Rocinante_ , but when she’d chosen to make a new life on Medina Station, he’d breathed a long and heavy sigh of relief.

Amos chose to greet her, which would mean he was hiding from her, and she would know it and start reading into it from the moment she came on board.

The gears of his mind spun and for the millionth time, Holden cursed the fact that pacing is not possible in weightlessness. All he could do was bounce gently from one side of the bunk to the other, first with his fingers, then with his toes.

It was a poor approximation.

Pushing off with his fingertips, the pendant Amos made for him tapped him in the chin for the umpteenth time. When he reached the far wall, he wedged the toes of one foot into a handhold.

“Now, can you maybe just stay there?” asked Bobbie from the corner she’d picked as the most strategic if things went south.

“Easy for you to say,” Holden whispered.

“I’m starting to get insulted over here. I’m armed to the teeth and in case I forgot to tell you, I _have_ done this before. Gunnery sergeant isn’t something I just made up to impress the boys.”

“You know she’s got…”

“I know exactly what she’s got." Bobbie’s expression was unimpressed. "And if she’s got half a brain, she’ll have had it removed because it’ll eventually kill her. If she hasn’t had it removed, again, I have done this before. All the implants in the world mean nothing if you have no discipline or training. I survived an attack by a protomolecule monster, on an airless moon, with a cracked face shield. I think I got this.”

“She did almost kill me, and those implants can’t be removed without killing her.”

“How long’s she had'um?”

“Mmm… since I discredited her father and started the biggest war known to mankind.”

“You know that wasn’t your fault.” She thought on that a moment. “She’s on borrowed time, then. Should be dead already.”

“She’s alive and kicking, lucky for us. Hopefully, we can get her to put a foot in the door.”

“Well, you’ve got your own personal wrecking ball now, sweet-cheeks, so relax. Auntie Roberta plans on being the crazy aunt who slips candy behind mommy and daddy’s back, thinks ice cream is perfectly fine for breakfast, and lets the kiddo stay up late watching fucked up movies.”

“Ice cream for breakfast?”

“Every once in a blue moon, why the fuck not? No, no. I’ve got it all planned. Get ready to hear ‘but Bobbie lets me’ for the rest of your life. And if it goes tits up, we’ll just slap a marine uniform on the kid and then I can really have some fun! Think I’m going to let some crazy girl with stim implants get in the way of any of that?”

The intercom clicked open.

“Hey, Cap. How ‘bout everyone joins us in the canteen?”

Amos had said _everyone_ , not _you_ , which was the code for everything on the up and up.

“Let’s go meet your arch nemesis,” Bobbie unhooked herself from the handhold and floated towards the door, leading the way.

There was a twist in Holden’s gut, like a hunger pang but also utterly unlike one. It was going to have to wait, though this particular pang was very bad at waiting. There hadn’t been a convenient moment when they entered the slow zone. He’d spent the entire time manically reviewing and going over his expectations of the crew, what they could possibly face, what they would do in the worst case scenario, which had a habit of happening to them, laws of probability be damned.

Amos had suggested a break. Had tried to steer him to his bunk, but Holden had indulged a moment of petulance and ignored what his body was telling him, refused what Amos’s body offered, retreated into a brooding silence made out of feeling manipulated, angry, and above all, frightened.

There was nothing for it now. It would have to wait.

Clarissa Mao hadn’t changed a bit since last he saw her. She’d been a gaunt creature then and was still alarmingly thin with huge eyes. She looked like a very large child floating next to Amos.

Bobbie entered the room first and held Holden behind her.

“Wow, some things never change, aye?” Clarissa asked of no one and everyone.

“Peaches ain’t gonna’ make any trouble,” Amos said.

“But she doesn’t believe us,” added Alex.

“Walk me through _why_ we would tell this particular lie,” Bobbie dropped flatly.

Holden pulled his hand terminal from his back pocket and expertly flicked it in Clarissa’s direction. She caught it and scrolled through the lengthy lab results.

“It’s not a lie, Clarissa,” said James. “It’s all there, but if you want to see the med-bay chair run me through those tests again, we can do that.”

Clarissa swiped the hand terminal off and flicked it back to him. “You ever get tired of being _the chosen one_ , Holden?”

“I have to admit that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

“You do look a little fat. Been eating your feelings?”

“Peaches, you be nice,” Amos scolded.

“And you,” she said back to Amos. “I guess this explains a few things.”

Amos shrugged with his hands, in the Belter fashion. “What can I say? I like bad boys.” Amos gave one of his rare full smiles and the sparkle in his eye was infectious. He wasn’t going to be made to feel bad or weird about the situation, but he clearly had no wish to take a dig at Clarissa either.

It was moments like this that made James believe that it wasn’t that Amos didn’t fit in with the general populace, it was that his inputs were different, keying into things most people are too jaded or defensive to care about or even register.

Clarissa seemed to notice the moment as well. She gave a conspiratorial grin and said, “Okay, what’s my part in this cheesy soap opera?”

“So, you’ll help us?” James asked.

“Yes, I think we’ve established that, James. I’m just not sure what I can do for you. You have your own ship.”

“We need help resupplying, information concerning habitable planets on the other side of those gates, and someone on the inside to make sure we don’t take a rail gun up the ass, and if we can slip out with no one the wiser, that would be the best scenario, but I’ll settle for a thorough corruption or deletion of any data that would point to our whereabouts,” said James.

“The first two are easy, you don’t even need me for those, just money, but Medina Station isn’t going let something like a Martian corvette - and the _Rocinante_ no less - just make a run for one of the gates. That’s too many eyes, Jim. They let me play the little pirate girl in her own dinghy but only because my days are numbered, not because I have any power or sway here. I’m like an old pet Rottweiler you keep around to scare off the kids, but I don’t have any teeth.”

“But you have Drummer’s ear,” said Alex.

“Aha, so there’s the other shoe. Why didn’t you go straight to her?”

Amos’s tone was grave. “Because if her answer is _no_ or _fuck you_ , then there’s no room to play and the cat’s out of the bag. It’s her and Johnson, and that’s it. We just need one of them, and I think Drummer’s the better bet.”

“I don’t know,” replied Clarissa. “The two of them are quite serious about gentrifying the whole OPA experience. They want to be seen as respectable, crisp uniforms, the whole nine. But even more than that, they want to show that they mean what they say and will hold others to account. What if you left the Roci behind and took mine? No one gives a shit what I do.”

“I’m not leaving the ship,” Holden said with as much finality as he could muster.

“Then maybe you could come with me and we can see what we can do?” she asked.

“No, I mean I’m not leaving the ship at all. I can’t board Medina Station.”

“Why not? You’ve gained a little weight, but there’s no sign on your forehead that says _baby on board_.”

“Actually, there kinda’ is,” Amos replied for him. “Jim boards the station, and if there’s a single latent alpha, of which there’s bound to be more than one, then there’s gonna’ to be trouble, and trouble is what we want to avoid.”

“You guys are going to have to work on that because avoiding trouble has not been your calling card in the past,” she replied. “I still don’t understand the problem.”

“Long story short, Holden is giving off a smell that maybe you don’t notice, but which I can’t tune out, and if there’s another alpha in that big-ass spinning drum, he or she’s gonna’ smell it too, and then there’s going to be a fight, I’m gonna’ have one more death to answer for in the hereafter, and we can kiss goodbye any chance of just quietly slipping out of everyone’s hair,” Amos explained.

Bobbie interjected, “Omegas aren’t allowed to come to term for a reason. On Earth, it’s because of overpopulation. Everywhere else it’s because we live in domes, tunnels or ships and there’s no getting away from everyone else’s smell. An omega in heat is dangerous.”

“Peaches,” said Amos. “Please help us.”

She pursed her lips, looking ambushed. It was only then that James realized they did have her pinned in a corner, literally. That wasn’t a good start to things. He moved out from behind Bobbie, she and Amos eyeing him cautiously.He floated gently to her and past her, gesturing for Bobbie to move.

Bobbie did not look remotely happy about the change in position, and Amos was breathing heavily.

“At least think about it,” James said.

Clarissa had watched the change, the way James created a path back out of the canteen. It hadn’t been lost on her. Some of the tension left her face.

“I’m looking at you and I can’t imagine any reason for you to lie about this, but I keep waiting for a punchline,” she said to James.

“It’s me. The punchline is _me_. Haven't you figured that out yet? God loves to tell jokes, and I’m his favorite material.”

Clarissa sighed. “Give me a day to think about it, _keyá_?”

“Okay,” agreed James. 


	3. Amos Burton

 

Amos escorted Clarissa to the _Rocinante’s_ dock. 

“I never meant to hurt you, you know that, right?” Amos said.

Clarissa Mao had eyes that had seen too much and done too much and it had followed her. She’d wanted more from him, more than he had been able to bridge in her direction. Not because he didn’t care for her, but because he did.

“You didn’t hurt me, Amos.”

Her eyes said that wasn’t entirely true, but she needed to batten down her hatches, and there was no fair reason not to let her.

“Okay, so then there’s no reason for you to hurt _me_ , right?”

They were gambling on her discretion, and he needed her to know how crucial that was.

She studied him, seemed to think her answer over.

“No, I don’t want to hurt you, Amos. I’m going to help you, but I need to think about how. There are things at stake for me too in helping you. I won’t screw you over, but I may need something in return. Not sure yet, just an idea. Sound fair?”

“Sounds honest, which is good enough for me.We’ll leave the back-channel open. Remember how to connect to it?”

“I built it and coded it. Same password?”

“Same.”

“Then yeah, I remember.”

She hung there in the air, silent questions pouring from her.

What she asked was, “Are you happy?”

“We’re still finding our footing, but yeah, Peaches. I’m happy.”

And it was true. He was happy. He had an enviable ship, a crew made of people sure to go down in the history books, and he had Holden who was beautiful in his pouty, brooding way, who was warm and soft at night. The image of Holden’s belly, which had grown undeniably, came to mind, the silkiness of its curve the only reason in the world to have fingers.

He snapped back, but not before Clarissa saw the evidence of his little trip.

“Yeah, you’re happy,” she said with a smirk. “Just give me twenty-four hours to make some things stick together. Have Alex handle the acquisition of supplies. Tell him to ask for Carol. You guys got money? Good money?”

“The best,” said Amos. “Untraceable, spends everywhere. Mostly gold, platinum, some hard-to-find tech, and coffee. Real coffee.”

“Sounds good. When I call, _time to go home_ means the party’s on, _time to leave_ means it’s not. Got it?”

“I got it.”

She swung the hatch shut with a wink, the Rocinante sealing its iris a split second later. The bulkhead struck like a muffled gong when the seal popped and her ship disconnected.

Amos pulled himself up to the bridge where Alex was unstrapping himself from the pilot’s seat where he had overseen the departure of the Pashang Fong.

“Alex, you gonna’ be all right with the supplies?” asked Amos.

“I’d be better if Bobbie were with me.”

“I don’t see any reason why she shouldn’t go if she wants,” Amos replied.

Bobbie stuck her head up into the bridge. “Did I just get invited to go shopping for bullets and railgun pucks? I’m in. Oh, and Amos, I think your hubby needs you.”

Amos loved Bobbie for many reasons, but lately it was because she’d taken all of ten minutes to assimilate the situation between himself and Holden. Ten minutes to put things in their new places, and continue on with the routine of staying alive through billions of miles of space where the dumbest mistakes were just as life-threatening as the gravest. Her presence and discipline were additional bulkheads against the vacuum and let him sleep at night with Holden safely in his arms.

It occurred to him what Bobbie meant about Holden needing him. He felt the pull too, his mind having slipped beneath James’s clothing more than once in the past few minutes.

“Okay, I’ll leave you to it, then,” Amos drifted toward the entry to the bridge.

“Hear that, Bobbie? We’re to be ‘left to it’. Got his hands in the captain’s britches and now he’s too big for his own.”

“You're damned right," Amos flung back. "Why don’t you see if you can find me some pants with extra room in the front."

Bobbie snorted a laugh.

“That’s not what I meant, Amos.” Alex pretended to be stung.

“Yeah, I know what you meant, Alex. Bobbie, see if you can’t find me another set of coveralls and some things for James. He’s just going to get bigger and we may not get a chance like this again for some time.”

Bobbie checked the tag in the back of his coverall for its size. “Holden and Alex are about the same size, yeah?”

“Yeah, he’s a little taller than me but other than that…” Alex trailed off.

“Good, I think we’re set, Amos. We’ll pull her into formation for supply and handle the rest.” She gave him a commanding flick of a finger down the bridge hatch.

“Peaches said to ask for Carol,” Amos tossed over his shoulder, slipping through the entryway.

* * *

 

Five floors down, in his bunk, he found Holden drifting with his eyes closed, his hands tucking his knees in just enough to make a ball out of himself, the beautiful swell of his belly visible in the space between his legs.

“She gonna’ help us, you think?” James asked, his eyes still closed, his body rotating gently in a circle.

“Yeah, if she can, she will.”

The ship moved and they both drifted toward the same wall. Amos slipped his arms in under James’s. James let go his knees and let himself be pulled into Amos’s embrace, wrapping his legs around his waist, his arms around Amos’s neck.

The smell coming off of Holden wasn’t just arousing and intoxicating in the poetic sense; it literally made him high, a soft, hazy, glowing high that was like being inside warm honey.

“Why’d you put me off for so long?” he whispered into Holden’s ear.

“Because I was nervous and scared, but mostly because I’m stupid.”

Holden pulled his tee shirt over his head, which augmented his smell tenfold. Amos was out of his coverall before they both came to rest on the approaching wall.

It had been too long. Lubricating fluid was already issuing from the end of Amos’s improbably large cock. It swayed and wobbled at the tip, as viscous liquids are wont to do in microgravity.

“You’re not stupid. Stubborn, yes, but not stupid.”

Holden was unshaven. Amos hadn’t asked, but he was sure it was meant to hide the fact that the line of his sharply square jaw had softened slightly. Or perhaps more fundamentally a show of defiance against what his body was doing. Amos didn’t care either way. Behind the prickle of beard and mustache, Holden’s lips were soft and giving. He opened to Amos’s kisses and sighed into his mouth. He pulled into Amos, his belly touching first, heat spreading upward as they made full contact.

“Please,” was all Holden needed to say.

Waves of euphoria rippled down from Amos’s head, met by other waves that started in his groin. They crashed together somewhere in his chest, making him breathe heavily, pulling in Holden’s scent in a self-reinforcing cycle.

Holden made a tight, impatient sound in his throat. He aligned himself and slowly drew Amos into him.

Sex was different now than it had been at first. He understood academically what was happening. None of that changed how he felt about it. None of it altered the beauty of Holden’s growing body, the smell from him that left Amos high for a long time afterward, and words were a poor substitute for how his body’s own changes were experienced. Gone were the fierce, hard orgasms that left him shaking and drained. They came quickly now, soft and shimmery, and they lasted for many minutes, Holden clinging to him, lost in his own bliss, Amos’s milk filling him slowly, leaving James equally high and drowsy.

The ship tea-kettled in a different direction and they floated back to the middle of the room. Holden moved against him, lifting himself and settling. It took only a few strokes before the moment came.

“Jesus, Amos. You are so beautiful.” Holden’s voice was a million miles away, lost in the grip of their connection. Amos felt the milk flow into Holden, filling him.

He gripped Holden’s head, forced him to look him in the eye. “Don’t ever make me wait again, understand? Please. I need this as much as you do.”

“I won’t. I swear.” The far bulkhead suddenly came into contact with Holden’s head and he swore softly.

Amos reached behind Holden for the nearest handgrip. He pressed Holden into the wall, driving in deeper, sending electric pulses along the shaft of his cock. Holden moaned and a small amount of semen came from his cock, pulsing in orgasm, which created waves of muscle spasm along Amos’s cock, which compelled him to drive in even deeper.

He wasn’t sure if Holden was laughing or crying. Sometimes he did both during sex. Later he told Amos not to let it worry him, that he wasn’t sure himself if he had laughed or cried or both, and that the answer didn’t matter because all of it was to be interpreted as joy and ecstasy. 

Holden’s mouth sought Amos’s. They breathed into one another. Amos imagined a cycle, a flow, from his cock into Holden’s body, from Holden’s body back into his lungs and back out again through his cock. It was silly. It almost made him laugh.

“What?” Holden asked.

“Nothing, daddy. I get lost inside of you.”

“Lost? How?”

“Like we’re two parts of one body. Like I was made to be here with you, and you with me. Like I stopped caring about where I end and you start because who gives a fuck.”

Holden’s eyes were heavy and dreamy, a cheshire grin parting his lips. “I love you,” he said.

The soft pulsing shimmer in Amos’s cock and groin strengthened at those words. Holden must have felt it. His eyes quivered and rolled up slightly.

“I love you, I love you, I love you, papa bear,” he repeated.

Amos’s body responded of its own accord. He ground into Holden, grinning into his ear, Holden groaning back.

The ship came to a stop and they were in complete free-fall, each wrapped around the other, a tiny planet rotating within the protective shell of the Rocinante, busy with the process of brewing new life.

“I love you too, daddy,” Amos whispered, and then the time for words was passed. Words don’t explain why a part of you feels like a part of you. It just is, and you just know it.

Somewhere deep in the space created by their adjacent chests, a soft rumble purred out like a sleeping lion.

 

 

 

 


	4. Bobbie Draper

 

After weeks of just the crew of the Rocinante, Medina Station felt like a small metropolis.

The atmosphere in the umbilical gangplank reminded her that every ship had its own stink. Here on the floor of the great generation ship, where Coriolis still had her leaning against a spin her eye didn’t see, but which her inner ear told her was there nonetheless, the full stink of Medina Station hit her.

It wasn’t bad, as ship-stinks went, but then technically Medina Station was new, and the smell of human presence had yet to seep into her metal and plastic body. It was certainly different to the Rocinante. It was surprising what the nose could learn to tune out. When the pheromone onslaught had been at its peak in the ship, she wasn’t sure if the filters had managed to clear it out or if she had just stopped smelling it. She would certainly know when she returned.

Alex said something in Lang Belta to the two youths at the dock. Whatever he said was as incomprehensible to the youths as it was to Bobbie.

“Carol. We were told to ask for Carol,” said Bobbie with slightly exaggerated clarity.

“Ya, Carol,” one of the thin youths responded, pointing down the dock with his entire hand, not just a finger.

   Bobbie nodded her thanks and shuffled in the indicated direction, trying her best to mask the dizzying effect of walking counterclockwise to spin, the floor coming a split second before it should.

“ _Pomang ówala_ ,” one of the youths said under his breath and behind their backs.

Alex started to turn with a “Hey..” but Bobbie stalled it, catching him by the elbow, employing the kind of strength that always surprised men, and Alex was no different.

“Leave it,” she said.

“Alright, alright. Ain’t gotta’ manhandle me, Bobbie. Jeez.” 

They passed several people. Bobbie finally stopped a woman and asked again for Carol.

The Belter woman responded in heavily accented English. “Carol have the red afro, big _tetas_.” She pointed further down the dock.

Bobbie spotted her, and indeed, she was a buxom woman of fair skin with a startlingly large red afro.

“Carol?” she said as she approached.

“That’s me,” she said. She scanned each of them tip to toe once and then glanced at her screen. “You’re with the Rocinante. You must be Bobbie. Which one is this one?” She tipped her chin up at Alex.

“Alex. Alex Kamal.” Alex stuck out a hand, which Carol only stared at.

“Clarissa Mao said we should talk to you about supplies,” Bobbie interjected over Alex’s awkward hand that was still stuck out. Bobbie gently urged him to lower it.

“Yeah, she told me to expect some VIPs, but I didn’t expect this. _Kowlting fosho kaka xitim_.”

Bobbie knew that one. _Shit just got real_. She smiled at what she was determined to take as a compliment.

“This is what I need.” Bobbie swiped their wish list from her hand terminal to Carol’s where it populated on her screen.

Carol scrolled slowly through the items. She tapped three, flagging them in red, and swiped the list back to Bobbie.

“I don’t have those three, the rest I got. You’re in luck with the clothes. If you’ve got good money, I’ve got brand new, still in the package. Came with the Martian relief ships, but nobody wanna’ wear shit that says MCRN. I’m guessing you don’t care, though.” Carol’s features settled into a shrewd expression against the oncoming haggle.

“I’ve got this to trade,” Bobbie swiped over an amount that represented only a quarter of what they actually had.

“Don’t need, don’t need…” Carol perused down the list. “This. This all the coffee you got?”

“That’s it,” said Bobbie.

“ _Na du suck wit mi_. No one shows their whole hand on the first go. Come on. Watcha’ got? I got almost everything you need, no hassles, no bullshit, so don’t bullshit me, ya?”

None of it came out angry. She just wasn’t going to be taken for a ride. Bobbie respected that. She swiped over a revised figure that still represented less than half of what they had.

Carol gave her a scathing glance to see if she would flinch.

She didn’t.

Scathe gave way to a grudging smile. “Okay. It better be real or I swear I will own both your asses and sell you into slavery.”

Alex laughed, but the cut of Carol’s eye said that under the joke there was something rather more serious.

“You think James Holden would drink that fungus shit?” Bobbie responded.

“Ah, yes. The barista rebel. How is that fucker? Why isn’t he here?” Carol’s left eyebrow skewed down.

“He’s fine. He’s got other business to attend to.” She hoped there was enough edge to her voice so that Carol dropped the topic without sounding unfriendly. That kind of nuance wasn’t exactly first nature to a trained marine.

“Just asking, _setara mali_ ,” the woman said with a wink at Bobbie.

Aha, the redhead was flirting with her. That put a different spin on things. Bobbie relaxed her pose, dropped her shoulders a hair, but Carol wasn’t fooled for a minute.

“Don’t go pulling a muscle, sweetie. Just make sure that coffee comes straight to me and we’ll be square. You offload it yourself and things’ll go faster, ya?”

“Deal,” said Bobbie, thankful for the boon of not having to keep people off the ship.

Carol sent the list to Bobbie’s terminal again, this time as a pending receipt, explaining that things were done by the book around here these days, with receipts, checks of cargo, the whole nine. Still, it wasn’t lost on Bobbie that Carol was using her as a personal guard over precious cargo. Real coffee beans almost twenty-three astronomical units away from the sun was serious business.

“That lady was flirting with you,” said Alex as they returned to the ship, this time moving spin-ward, with a different set of wobbly legs underneath them.

“You reckon?” said Bobbie.

“I’m just saying,” replied Alex. “We’ve been on the damned ship forever and the first woman I meet flirts with _you_ , not me. It just… sucks.”

“I refuse to believe this place doesn’t have at least a dozen brothels that are registered, and twice as many that aren’t. You’ve got money. Go spend it,” Bobbie flicked a hand to show how much she cared.

“What about the supplies?”

“ _After_ , dickhead. You never know, Carol might play for both teams. She already knows I’m not in the game. Bat those lashes, princess. Show a little leg.”

“Ha ha,” replied Alex, deadpan. “You’re not funny.”

“I may not be funny, but there’s a pretty redhead back there with big boobs who wants in my knickers, so I think I’m winning.” She gave a smug grin and passed her terminal to the guard at the umbilical entry. He took a digital copy of the pending receipt to check against what entered and exited.

“Any of this stuff going to require exterior loading?” he asked in unexpectedly sharp English.

“Shouldn’t, no. The cases I’m delivering will pass through the umbilical with no trouble and I don’t think anything we requisitioned will be any larger,” she replied. The guard was standing with the help of magnetic boots while they floated. The umbilical was dead center of spin, so they were in free fall.

“All right.” The guard popped the swing arms on the cargo elevator next to him and showed them how the belt ratchets worked to tie things down. Bobbie didn’t need the explanation, but the man had a job to do and he was going to do it. Discipline had to start somewhere and though the dynamic here still wasn’t remotely what she had been trained to engage, it was clear that someone was moving it in that direction, and that maybe it was a whole lot of someones like this guard, all trying to fake it until they made it. He knew who she was and what she was and was trying his damnedest to impress. No one was going to snub him as subpar. She liked that as much as she liked Carol’s tightfisted shrewdness.

In a different life, she could imagine finding a place here, getting in on the ground floor, so to speak, helping them really lean into real discipline. Or maybe that was just patronizing, she thought to herself. They would find their own way, and her little family would find its way. She looked over at Alex. He caught her looking and gave a face that said what? and she responded with her own that said never mind.

“Holden’s gonna’ freak when he sees how much this cost,” Alex said.

“I think we got a great deal. Less than half.”

“Yeah, but it’s _coffee_. You understand how Jim feels about the coffee, right?”

“I understand how he _used_ to feel. Right now he’s not drinking it, so it shouldn’t matter. We got everything but toothpaste, booze, and these little filters. So when you’re done taking care of business, find the local open market or black market or whatever market there is. Filters, toothpaste, booze, in that order. Copy?”

“Copy that, gunny.”


	5. Alex Kamal

 

The coffee was brought directly to Carol under armed guard. Alex was still invisible to her, but the armament and razor straight line of Bobbie’s back and shoulders seemed to be just what the doctor ordered. As expected, everything was transferable through the umbilical.Carol provided the same two youths they had seen earlier as schlep-hands up to the transfer point where Bobbie took the cargo and brought it on board the ship. Two people in the umbilical just crowded the process, so Bobbie told him to skedaddle and find the rest of the items and whatever else he needed to take care of.

The idea of paying for sex depressed Alex to no end.

Of course he could pay for it.

But why couldn’t a pretty girl with a crazy afro and big boobs flirt with _him_?

No, _that_ girl never flirted with Alex. Never.

Well, once. Talissa. She wasn’t redheaded or had particularly large boobs. She was small and intense and intimidatingly intelligent with huge eyes that saw everything.

And she was in the past.

Fuck it. 

Alex sighed dramatically and didn’t care who saw or didn’t see.

Everywhere Medina Station showed the scars of her storied life. How she’d been hastily rearranged inside to obviate the spinning drum that was the intended floor of a generation ship, and instead to think of the drive plume as down and turn every wall into a floor, every floor into a wall.

She was now back in her original configuration, with the drum spinning fast enough to be worth the while, without crumpling Belter bodies grown and raised in microgravity.

New Belter children would be born here, children who had an approximation of sky and up and down. Children who would look less like their parents and more like Alex.

He wondered how tall his son Melas was now.

“Full-blown pity party, huh?” Alex said to himself.

He stuck himself into a conversation between two Belters, interrupting them.

“Can either of you fellahs point me in the direction of where I can get my hands on supplies not available through official channels?”

The two men looked at one another. The younger of the two said, “ _Keting, pampa?_ ”

“Nothing too racy. Toothpaste, a rather particular kind of air filter, and maybe a bottle o’ hooch,” answered Alex.

“Filters, no problem. Hooch is booze? Ya? Hooch, no problem. Toothpaste, gonna’ cost.”

“Yeah, I figured. If you would be so kind as to just point me in the right direction.” Alex hoped his impatience didn’t come through too much.

“Different things, different places. I take you.” The man waved his friend off and sidled up with Alex. “You got good money?”

“Yeah, I’m with the Rocinante. My money should be good.”

“ _Rocinante, im pashangwala mal!_ You not Holden. Everybody know his face. You Amos?”

“Alex Kamal.” He stuck his hand out and prayed it wouldn’t be left hanging again.

“Ah, _da pomang koyo!_ ”

The man’s face brightened enormously, and it was only then that Alex realized how young he was, not more than fifteen or sixteen, just tall in the way all Belters are tall and threadbare like all poor people.

“Yeah, _da pomang koyo_ ,” Alex relented. Not the nicest epithet, but at least the kid knew who he was.

“You some crazy motherfuckers,” he said, switching back to English.

“Listen, I know how this works. I’ll cut you in for a finder’s fee. I won’t fuck you on it, you don’t fuck me in return. Deal? You know who I am and you know who’s with me, so let’s all be cool and everyone wins, _to pochuye ke?_ ”

“ _Ya, bosmang, mi pochuye to. Mika, nem mi_.” he said pointing to his chest. His name was Mika. “I don’t fuck nobody unless they pay. But maybe fo sexy muscle _pomang koyo_ , Mika show good time, ya?”

The irony of life was a sweet blade that cut you deep. Bobbie got the pretty redhead with the nice rack and here was a skinny Belter kid trying to work his way into Alex’s pants for what he was sure would be a reasonable rate, all things considered. Only a Belter would ever use the words sexy and muscle in the same sentence when referring to him, but two cocks in the same bunk was one cock too many for Alex.

“Thanks, Mika.” Alex was about to spin the most polite refusal he could muster, but there was something about the boy’s salesmanship that was too bright and brittle. Even for a Belter, the boy was painfully thin.

“Mika, you hungry?” Alex asked, praying the boy’s pride wouldn’t be too stung.

Several emotions played across the youth’s face, but in the end the truth won out. “Ya, bosmang. Mi always hungry.”

“Alright, let’s get you fed.” Alex reached to place his hand on the kid’s shoulder and Mika’s cheeks flushed red.

He ate everything Alex brought, never once even looking at what the food was, which was more than a little heartbreaking. Alex wondered how often people took the kid up on his offer of a little roll in the hay, how often Mika had to put up with someone’s greasy paws on his skin, making him do god-knows-what just to get some food.

His earlier disappointments were shamefully meaningless in the light of his newfound friend. They sat at a table meant for Mormon missionaries on their way to the stars. Mika looked like a folded ladder, all knees and elbows, and that goofy smile and guarded eyes.

He finished the last of a handful of faux-meat pies and washed it back with a bulb of cold tea.

“ _She she taki taki, Alex. To kopeng mi; mi kopen to._ ”

Alex knew those words - _you’re my friend, I’m you’re friend_ \- but the way the kid said it, the solemnity and the way he leaned into it, Alex felt like a pact had been sealed.

The first thing Alex bought was a small cargo container in which to place the day’s finds. The filters were bought from a man who’d put a mild case of obsessive-compulsive order to his advantage. From what Alex could see, the stacks and piles of filters where artistically immaculate and he knew exactly where each kind was. They were not permitted entry past the doorway. Alex showed him the image of the filter on his terminal and there was a flurry of Lang Belta between the man and Mika, where _pomang kapawu_ was mentioned several times. The filters were produced with a suspicious glare that didn’t let up until they were out of eyeshot. The woman with the toothpaste had a baby on her hip and a much less organized menagerie of items, but she seemed no less aware of the location of each and every thing she had to offer. And she didn’t haggle. She just kept repeating the same thing over and again, which turned out to be the price, which Alex paid without blinking. Her eyes narrowed when she realized she could have easily taken Alex for a sucker had Mika not been there to serve as an interpreter.

The hooch was a more interesting affair. An ancient brown woman operated a dangerous looking contraption of a still in a back room. The smell of fermentation hit them long before they found her. Alex was hoping to find branded bottles, but instead he found moonshine that could strip the paint off the Rocinante, in vacuum. When he asked Mika to inquire as to more sophisticated fair, the woman spoke directly to Alex.

“ _To wanya inya kakarowm_ , go to Earth,” she said, arms akimbo, looking like she could take Alex in a fight even though she was one of the oldest people Alex had ever met in person.

He bought several mismatched containers of the clear liquid. Amos would take great pleasure pretending to enjoy the stuff.

Mika drooped at the conclusion of the last purchase, their temporary friendship appearing to come to an end.

“You wanna’ clear your pipes a little?” Alex asked him, hefting one of the containers of moonshine.

Mika brightened again, leaving Alex for a few minutes and returning with two empty bulbs, which Alex did not ask as to where they came from.

They left the cargo container in Mika’s room, which was littered with trash, and appeared to be shared with at least one other person, but Mika assured him that no one else would enter the room. Surprisingly, it had a palm lock, which Mika activated.

They sat in the light of the long, thin, artificial sun hanging in the middle of the station and proceeded to get drunk. The moonshine was wickedly awful, but it certainly did the job with great efficiency.

Mika did a good job of restraining his curiosity concerning the life and times of the crew of the Rocinante, but his few questions made it clear that Alex had a captive audience, and the booze put Alex in the mood for a good chinwag.

 

* * *

 

Alex peeled open eyelids that felt stuck to his eyeballs. The room did an excellent impression of a gyroscope in full spin when he lifted his head.

The hangover hadn’t kicked in yet because he was still drunk, but it loomed like a hurricane on the horizon.

He was in Mika’s room, tucked into a corner, on a collection of rags and sheets that served the kid as a bed. Mika was curled up next to him.

“Wake up, kid,” Alex said through a mouth made of glue.

   Mika shook next to him on the floor and a second later Alex realized he was laughing.

“Mi no sleep, pampa.” The kid unfolded and moved over to where the cargo container sat against a wall. “Pampa got fucked up!”

“I thought we had a deal, kid.”

“Hey, Mika no fuck _wit_ to. _Pampa_ drink too much Belter champagne. Brought you here, keep you safe. Watch your stuff. Everything here.” He slapped the side of the cargo container. “Mi try fo snuggle _wit pampa, amash to na wanya_.”

He shrugged and had a sheepish expression, but now he did look stung, at the accusation, and maybe at having been refused a second time.

“Sorry, kid. I don’t even remember coming in here.”

“Not surprised, pampa.”

When had he gone from _bosmang_ to _pampa_? He checked his terminal. Three hours had evaporated under the slippery burn of Belter moonshine. There were several missed calls.

“Thanks for watching out for me, but I gotta’ go.” Alex struggled to his feet, unsure if his wobbliness was the booze or the Coriolis effect. 

“Yep. Come on, pampa. Mi take you home.”

Alex called the ship. A very worried Bobbie answered.

“Alex, where the entire fuck have you been? Tell me this is you calling me from the afterlife, saving me from the guilt of killing you.” Bobbie’s face in the screen said she wasn’t kidding.

“Nope, still alive, but as soon as this hangover kicks in your offer may just count as a mercy killing. I found everything. Coming back now. Do me a favor and meet me at the umbilical with a bag of tradables. I’ll explain everything later.”

“Had to disengage. Give me half an hour.”

“Okay, pampa. Take us longer than that to get there,” Mika cut in.

“Who’s that?” Bobbie asked. “No, never mind. Get to the umbilical, explain later.”

* * *

 

As the centripetal force decreased on their way up and toward center, Alex’s hangover kicked into full swing, complete with flop sweat that threatened to wiggle and flow into his eyes.

Bobby was as nonplussed as he’d ever seen her. The disappointment on her face was positively marital.

The guard at the umbilical entry was more concerned with Mika.

“He helped me with some acquisitions and transport service and the like,” Alex said to the guard, attempting to get him to back down.

“Yeah, duster. I know the kind of services his kind provide.”

Alex was taken aback by the unveiled rudeness of the guard that managed to sting in multiple directions. Mika ignored the man completely, obviously, and sadly, accustomed to that kind of marginalization.

He whispered into Alex’s ear, starstruck, “ _Alex, im Bobbie Draper ke?_ ”

“In the flesh.Bobbie, this is Mika. He, uh…”

“Acquisition and transport. Yeah, I heard. I’m guessing the booze was on special discount, aye?” She swung a remonstrative glance at one and then the other. “I’m also guessing that _this_ is for you, young man.”

She launched the vacuum sealed bag of coffee beans, Mika snapping it expertly out of the air.

“ _Café?_ ” he said. “ _Inya café ke?_ ”

“Should make for some good trade, I would think.” Alex smiled and pretended to ignore the jackhammers currently working their unholy magic on his skull.

“ _Ya lik pashang!_ ” Mika’s smile was ear to ear. “ _Taki, Alex. Solid koyo, bosmang_.”

Mika pulled Alex unexpectedly toward him and kissed him on the cheek. Alex almost said something, but the kid stopped at just the peck and Alex figured that was harmless enough.

“Tell your _escort_ to clear out,” the guard commanded.

Bobbie snapped, “Oy, Dickface McNuttsack. Nobody ordered any cunt, so keep your trap shut.”

It wasn’t unheard of for Bobbie to drop the occasional f-bomb like anyone else, but _that_ was unquestionably the sauciest bit of verbiage Alex had ever heard from her.

“And don’t go embarrassing yourself waving that bee-bee gun in my face, sunshine. I pick my teeth with bigger. How about I call my friend Drummer to bring you something worth my while.”

Alex knew it was mostly just lip, but Bobbie sold it with expertly trained enthusiasm. The man backed down, his mouth tight with resentment.

“Mi go, Alex. Na wanya make trouble fo you.” To Bobbie, he said in charmingly overprecise English, “Nice to meet you, Bobbie Draper. Mi big fan.”

Though the guard, having been shamed, was determined to look off into the distance, to ignore their presence, Bobbie said in his direction, “See that? Polite young man knows his P’s and Q’s. That’s how it’s done, lads. That’s how it’s done.” She pulled up next Mika and gave him a loud burlesque kiss on the temple.

“Thanks for being a friend, kid. If we come through again, we’ll look you up.” Alex took Mika’s hand and squeezed tight. He’d come to like the kid, so unusually innocent despite the forces around him.

“Next time, _café o chai_. No more Belter champagne _fo pampa_. Cheap date, _koyo_.”

Bobbie barked a laugh and pushed the container down the umbilical. Alex followed, looking back once to wave goodbye to Mika, but he was already gone, no doubt wanting to be clear of that guard.

There were uncounted kids like him, stretching from Earth to where he now floated - this space outside of space, but now Alex knew this one’s name.


	6. Clarissa Mao

 

Drummer proved to be unapproachable and Clarissa Mao was never anything other than _persona non grata_ to Johnson.

Ungrateful bastard.

That left Plan B, which Clarissa had to admit had always really been Plan A.

James Holden was going to hate it.

The additional equipment was easily had; the programming she had already done herself for other reasons, frivolous reasons that now had a purpose.

What little money she had she spent on topping up the Pashang Fong’s water for teakettle ballast.

She looked around her small room. It was as empty as she felt. There was nothing here to worry about, nothing worth taking.

There was a movement in the corner of her eye. She turned, but nothing was there. The data-mining algorithm she’d put into play continued to piecemeal information to her terminal. She already had most of it, acquired over the last months, so this remaining bit wasn’t too likely to draw attention.

“Three twenty-five,” someone said from behind her.

The spike of adrenaline was nearly as sharp and harsh as a crash-couch injection to withstand a high-g burn. It was doubly shocking because the voice wasn’t unknown, it was all too familiar, and it was a voice that had no business being here or anywhere for that matter because its owner was dead.

Clarissa turned slowly. It was just a flicker, like a screen that was dying. Juliette popped in and out of existence.

   It was her sister, Juliette.

“Three twenty-five,” she said again.

“What?” Clarissa whispered.

“Ca… ay… Three twe…” She flicked in and out and then out altogether.

She’d never had hallucinations before. The stim implant was doing terrible things to her body, but that wasn’t one of them. This was new. She blew out a long breath. Maybe it was nothing, just the last in a line of side effects that would end in her death, a death she no longer dreaded or feared.

But maybe it was something else, something Amos had mentioned to her about Holden.

Maybe.

Her terminal blinked green. The data was all there. The screen went wonky for a second and a ribbon appeared at the bottom with the number three hundred twenty-five scrolling in endless procession.

The scroll stopped and was replaced by the numbers 1373 and 325, flashing one after the other.

“Go, Claire.”

She turned but the image of Juliette was not there. The numbers on her screen remained, though. She turned the terminal off and on again and the numbers remained.

Not a hallucination.

She swiped the screen to the right and called up the dialing program for the Rocinante’s back channel.

Amos’s face appeared on her screen. “Hey, Peaches. What’s the word?”

“Time to go home, Amos.”

“Copy that. Um, we got a message from an old friend just a few minutes ago…”

“Let me guess. It was a number, just a number?”

“Yeah… how’d you know?”

“I got the same message. I think I know what it means. Stay on course for home and keep her under a thousand KPH.”

“Uh… okay.”

“And keep the docking cycle initiated.”

“Copy that, Peaches. See you in a bit.”

* * *

 

It was Bobbie who met her at the dock.

“I got some things to bring aboard,” she said with a grimace. “And I’m one of the things.”

Bobbie opened her mouth as if to say something but then didn’t. She just shrugged and helped Clarissa pull the assortment of bags and cases she had packed into the cabin of the _Pashang Fong_.

“We gonna’ jettison your ship?” Bobbie asked when the last bag came through.

“Can the Roci land on a planet?” asked Clarissa.

“She’s got plenty of tricks, but that’s not one of them at the moment. She’s got an aftermarket rail gun tacked to her keel so the landing gear is out of the loop unless we remove that.” Bobbie answered.

“Then we’re keeping her. She’s over-heavy with ballast right now but I’ve got the mass specs with me to feed to the Roci.”

“Sounds like a plan. Amos said you had a visit from Miller.”

“It wasn’t miller. It was my sister, Julie.”

“Oh. You know what, I think this is a conversation for you and Holden.”

“Yeah.”

Bobbie looked at her, something unspoken hung between them.

“Bobbie, I’m not here to hurt anyone. I swear it,” Said Clarissa. “I… I’m dying - I think you know that - and I just don’t want to die on Medina Station. You don’t have anything to worry about from me. If I had the balls, I would just rip the implants out myself, but it seems I’m not ready to go quite yet.” She pointed to the menagerie of bags and cases. “Most of that is high nutrient-density nonperishables. Emergency supplies for rich people and basically the last of the Mao fortune. Tastes like crap, but with a little creativity it’ll stretch for a long time.”

“Okay,” Bobbie said with a nod. “I believe you, you know, but this is still Holden’s ship. It’s gonna have to be his say-so.”

“Yeah. Can we go talk to him?”

“Yep, he’s waiting for you on the bridge with Amos.”

“Is Alex there too? I need to go over some code modifications with him.”

“He’s plugged into the med-bay chair at the moment running a detox cycle. Should be another fifteen minutes.”

“Never a dull moment with you guys, aye?” 

* * *

 

“This wasn’t exactly what I was thinking, Clarissa.” Few people could scowl with quite as much panache as James Holden. The extra weight he was carrying, the roundness of his face, only made him look like a pouting child.

“Look, I know that, but it was going to be impossible to work from that end. This way we don’t need to worry about changed minds or sudden crises of conscience,” Clarissa tried to keep her voice as calm and neutral as possible.

“And we get a shuttle to boot,” added Amos.

“Let’s not forget she had a visit too, which up until now was pretty much your exclusive territory, Cap.” Alex had an unhealthy green sheen to his skin, but the med-bay chair had declared him fit for service.

“Tell me again what you saw,” said Holden.

“I don’t know. She blinked in and out. All she said was that number, three twenty-five, and then it came up on my terminal with the number one three seven three. One thousand three hundred and seventy-three is the number of gates inside the ring. They’ve all been assigned a number, with the gate to our system as number one. I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. Your guy gave you the same number, right?” She was beginning to feel exasperated. They were losing time she would need to install custom code into the Rocinante’s systems.

“Yeah, Miller gave me the same two numbers,” said Holden.

“Thought you said he only gave you the one number, three two five?” Amos said, half question, half statement.

“No. He gave me both. Just wanted to hold that back to see if she confirmed it.”

“Alright, well it’s confirmed then. Peaches has a plan, a ship, and the Miller-Julie seal of approval, right?” Amos took James’s hand. James let him, but never took his eye off Clarissa.

“Brought her own food too,” Bobbie dropped into the silence.

“Fine, fine,” James finally said. “How’s this going to work?”

“We continue on our current course, just as would be expected. I have code that will make it look like the Rocinante passed through the gate back to our system. Then we skirt the perimeter of the sphere, in the space between gates so that they don’t activate. I have code that will make us invisible to everything except visual, but no one should be looking for us after it appears we’ve exited.

“They’ll see our plume,” said James.

“We flip her and stop her before we actually exit. Reflection from the gate boundary will mask the fact that we’re breaking, not accelerating. Run the bogus code showing us exiting, turn the ship, burn as hard she’ll take for a few seconds, then we teakettle the rest of the way to gate number three twenty-five.” She’d gone over it a dozen times, but saying it out loud now, it sounded terribly thin.

“Teakettle?” Alex tapped up an interior diagram of the slow zone, found their destination gate and said, “That’s gonna’ be a lot of fuckin’ ballast on just teakettle.”

“Well, I just happen to have a lot of fuckin’ ballast on board the _Pashang Fong_. Transferring it to the Roci will be the least of our concerns.”

“Okay, what’s going to be our _biggest_ concern?” Bobbie asked.

“Getting this _pomang_ ship to accept my code without scrubbing it out. She’s not going to like some of it, and we’re running out of time.”


	7. Mika

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The following chapter would be most correctly presented with all the dialogue completely in Lang Belta, but that’s daunting to read for the uninitiated, so for those who’ve read this far, firstly, deepest thanks for reading, and secondly, the chapter will be written completely in standard English, understanding that these characters would all be speaking exclusively Lang Belta.

 

 

Mika was a celebrity.

He’d been seen with the duster named Alex Kamal and when the guard at the umbilical gate reported him for loitering and soliciting, it only confirmed Mika’s association with the Rocinante.

A few judicious trades of just a small amount of the coffee beans gave him enough to treat his friends to as much food as they could eat.

Hungry youths do not, as a rule, turn down food or the company of celebrities.

Mika bathed in it. His story spun bigger and more resplendent with each tell. Grigori - beautiful Grigori - was sitting next to him, hanging on his every word. When he took Mika’s hand, lacing their fingers, a thrill ran up Mika’s skin.

They all laughed at the mention of the pregnant Earthman. No one took it seriously. It was just part of the game of spinning stories. Inners were incomprehensible. It fit right in. As long as the food kept coming, they were happy to humor even the most outlandish claims.

 _— What next?_  they asked.

— _Are they vampires?_

_— Are they supermen?_

_— Did the duster get_ **_you_ ** _pregnant too?_

That last remark left them all in stitches. Grigori whispered in his ear, “I hope not.”

But it was all in fun and the momentary relief from hunger. It’s amazing how happy you can be with a full belly.

When the bright rod in the sky started dimming to approximate night and his friends began peeling away, Grigori kissed him slowly and placed his hand along Mika’s flank, under his shirt, and it was so warm.

Mika was no fool, though. The celebrity would fade as soon as the coffee was gone and no one wanted to hear the stories anymore. Grigori would likely fade too. But maybe, just maybe, if he played it cool, if he didn’t overdo it, if he didn’t let on just how overwhelmed he was by Grigori’s beauty, then maybe he would stay.

It was the next day, sharing a meal with an appreciative Grigori, Mika still lost in the afterglow of the night before, that two men in the freshly militant looking uniforms of Medina Station approached him.

He assumed it had to do with the complaint from the guard.

He was wrong. 

* * *

 

Mika was escorted to the top of the station. These were realms he never expected or even wanted to see. This was where people in charge lived. People in charge were not people who associated with people like Mika, and when they did, it usually spelled trouble.

They left him in a small room with the typical bolted-down table.

Camina Drummer was a thin, waspish woman, with the uncanny appearance of being made out of solid titanium. She was tiny, but Mika had no doubt that taking a punch from Drummer was something a person would remember for a long time.

Life in a sealed environment is a life of recycling. Food, water, air, and gossip all cycle over and over again. Aided by the guard’s complaint, at some point Mika’s story had made it to the bridge and the powers that be.

“Tell me again what the duster said. Tell me slowly,” she commanded of Mika, her voice pitched in an odd way, assuming a friendship that was not there.

“He was drunk. Really drunk. Inners can’t hold their liquor. He said a lot of things,” Mika replied.

“I understand. Take your time. You want something to drink? Some tea, some water?” she offered.

“No, I’m fine, thank you.”

“Okay, then just start from the beginning.”

Mika told the story again, stripping it of the fanciful additions and exaggerations he’d told his friends to entertain them. He told her how the duster Alex Kamal had approached him and a friend on the drum floor, how he’d interrupted them, how rude he’d thought the duster was, at first, and then realized there was some money to be made in helping him. In this version, he’d played it true that he’d solicited the man, made him offers, which he’d refused because he was only looking for supplies. He recounted how sad the man looked. He didn’t tell Drummer about his attraction to the duster, how he wasn’t going to charge him if maybe he wanted a little ass. He did tell how he’d plied the duster to open one of the containers of moonshine, to share a little with him, and how the duster had proceeded to find the bottom of that container with injudicious speed.

The duster had spoken about how lonely he was on the Rocinante. That there was a beautiful, strong marine on the crew to whom he was invisible. Mika recounted Alex’s story about meeting Carol at the dock, how Carol had hit on the marine named Bobbie, how that frustrated him. And then the man had said strange things that made no sense to Mika. He’d said, “And to top it off, as if the universe ain’t fucked with me enough already, the captain and our mechanic have been going at it nonstop since it turned out the cap is an omega.”

“He said _omega_? He used that word?” Drummer sat next to him, almost touching his thigh. It was unsettlingly intimate.

“Yeah, he said omega. What does that even mean?”

“Don’t worry about that right now. Did he say the captain was pregnant?”

“Yeah. He said that. How does a man get pregnant?”

“It’s not supposed to happen. Not anymore. But a long time ago it did happen. You’re sure he said these things? You’re not just pulling this out of your ass? We know you spent time with the Rocinante crew, and I understand if you want to spin stories for your friends, play the big man. I understand that. But don’t bullshit me. Did he really say these things?” He large eyes were piercing.

“I swear he did. But again, he was really, really drunk. I had to drag him into my room because he’d passed out on the floor in public.” Mika started to have the sickening feeling that he was committing a betrayal, that he was fucking his friends over.

Drummer glanced at one of the men in her entourage and gave him a quick nod. He left without saying a word.

“Thank you for your help, Mika. You’re not in trouble. You can go,” she said with a smile that was all lips and no eyes.

He left and scrambled back down to the drum floor where he found Grigori waiting for him, worried.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Nothing, nothing. They just wanted to know what Alex said to me. I need a drink, man. Come on.”

He took Grigori’s hand, leading him back to his room, hoping to find a way to burn off the tension of that strange interrogation, preferably a way that included Grigori.


	8. Amos Burton

 

The Rocinante proved to be as resentful of Clarissa’s coding as she expected. The core system kept isolating the code and quarantining it. They clamped the last loophole just before they flipped the ship to decelerate. They burned her high and hot to maximize the reflection from the ring gate.

Clarissa ran the application, causing a radiation dispersal pattern that mimicked the Rocinante passing through the gate. As soon as she was stationary, Alex turned her ninety degrees and burned hard for five seconds.

Clarissa ran the second part of the application, disguising the ship as background radiation. From herein out they would teakettle course corrections to hug the curve of the slow zone, keeping a steady two hundred kilometers from the deadly boundary.

Amos followed Clarissa’s instructions to the letter. They slipped easily back into their old relationship. Amos appreciated that Clarissa was a person of few words and that at least when it came to him, what she said and what she did always matched. He understood the irony of how they had come to meet, that she had done everything except play her cards straight, but that had changed when she came into Holden’s sphere. James Holden had a way of creating satellites out of those who came into his gravitational pull, Amos among them.

“Alex, I’m routing from tank two until it’s empty,” she said over the comms to the bridge.

“Copy that,” Alex responded.

Bobbie had EVA’d and run lines from the Pashan Fong’s ballast tanks to the Rocinante’s tank number two. They would use the ballast of the smaller ship first, holding the Rocinante’s in reserve for whatever awaited them on the other side of gate number three twenty-five.

They were back in free fall at this point. There was nothing left to do but hope their deception worked. By the time they had reached the destination gate, flipped, decelerated and altered course to enter the gate, it would be too late for a rail gun puck to reach them from the station or one of the gates. They would enter and then head due east of axis to get out of the gate’s target zone.

“Wanna’ talk about your sister?” Amos broached.

Clarissa’s large, haunted eyes slowly panned toward him.

“I mean about seeing her. That’s gotta’ be some craziness,” Amos caveated.

“I’m not crazy,” she said flatly.

“I didn’t say that. I just know that if I saw someone who I knew was gone, that would be crazy. My sanity isn’t the part that’s in question, or yours. I’m just saying.”

She let out a long breath. “To be honest, I did think I was losing my mind. I figured it was the implant eating away another slice of my brain, eroding the space between what’s real and what’s not.”

“How’d she look when you saw her?”

She thought about it a minute and then said, “Frustrated, like she always did. Living in my father’s shadow wasn’t easy, for either of us.” She pulled out her hand terminal and swiped to the screen where the two numbers still flashed one after the other.

She held it up to Amos. “You do see that, right?”

“Yep, plain as day. Came up on Holden’s terminal too, just like that.”

There was silence for several minutes.

“What do hope to find on the other side of that gate?” he asked.

“I’ve been through that gate. I’ve been through most of them. I used the same coding to hide like a little spider, crawling on her web.” She flicked a file from her terminal to the screen in front of them.

It was a simple diagram of a system with five planets, two of which were jovian, the other three much closer in to a star very similar in size, mass, and age to Sol. The second planet from the star had two satellites that were improbably identical in size and distance from the planet. Clearly artificial.

“You’ve been to this planet?” Amos asked, running the diagram through its orbit cycles, watching the planets spin around their stair at various rates.

“Nope. Too far to go in the _Pashang Fong_. She’d make it, sure it enough, but there’s not enough room aboard her for the supplies I would have needed to get there _and_ back. It was a dumb game, popping into and out of gates without Medina Station knowing, but it was a distraction for a while, a way to feel like I still had control over my own life. I could have entered and maybe made it to one of the planets with what I could stuff into the interior of the ship, but it would have been a oneway ticket and I wasn’t quite ready to buy one of those.”

“Aha,” was all Amos could think to respond to that.

“What about you?” she asked.

“Somewhere to take care of Holden, to take care of our baby when it comes. If past experience is anything to go by, I got a good idea of what the universe plans to throw at us, but for now, for a little bit, just somewhere to be the person I see in Holden’s eyes.”

Her eyes sparkled but not from tears. She was holding back laughter.

“All right, all right, I know that sounds sappy and shit.” His own grin betrayed him and he started to laugh and Clarissa joined him, but it was companionable and friendly. “You know you can ask me anything you want about me and Holden. I ain’t never been the bashful type.”

“Yeah, I got that, but I actually know the broad strokes already. One of the great things about being a moneyed debutant is having oodles of time to study and read whatever you like. You never know what will come up in conversation, and the last thing you want when rubbing elbows with wealthy egomaniacs is to look like a dope. It’s kinda’ like being a geisha. Geishas were very well educated and treated conversation and being up on current events as an art form.”

“So you’re like a geisha?” he asked, rolling his eyes.

She pantomimed fans in her hands, fluttering them down in front of her.

They felt a slight change in direction.

Clarissa thumbed the intercom. “You seeing good flow, Alex?”

“Copy that. Good flow to tank two from the most regal and elegant Pashang Fong,” answered Alex.

   Clarissa continued, “Amos, you don’t owe me anything, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m the one who owes you. Every human in existence was ready to put me through an airlock at the earliest convenience. You were the only one who didn’t treat me like a monster.”

“Because you’re not a monster. Just had some fucked up shit to deal with,” said Amos. “I’ve met monsters. Real ones. You were never that.”

Bobbie was suddenly in the doorway. “Everything looks good with Holden. Thought you’d want to know.”

They had no idea what the high-g burns, even as short as they were, would do to Holden so they had crash-couched him in one of the med-bay chairs to monitor him. He had refused to risk the usual cocktail the standard crash couches delivered to help stave off the negative effects of high-g burns, so this was the compromise he’d agreed to.

“He give you a hard time?” Amos asked Bobbie.

“Nah. Quiet, mostly. He’s still in the chair, though there’s no reason for him to stay there until we get to the destination gate.” Bobbie shrugged and leaned up against the doorway, taking in their work. “Everything okay on this end?” she asked.

“So far so good,” said Clarissa. “If you need to go…” she offered.

“In a little bit. The Captain gets prickly when he feels like he’s being crowded. What do you think, Bobbie?” he turned to his friend.

“Yeah. I think he needs some alone time. He knows where you are.”


	9. Captain James "Jim" Holden

 

The burn had been bad, but not nearly as bad as he’d expected. Bobbie had ridden it with him in the adjacent chair. She had the benefit of the cocktail, though she admitted to revulsion as to how it made her feel.

After the second maneuver was complete and Bobbie checked that the chair gave the all clear.

   "Everything looks normal," she said.

   "Really? Normal?" He gave her a sidelong look.

   "Normal as gets around here," she replied with a smile. "I'm not sure how you managed without the juice, but you did." She flicked on the ultrasound to show him the image. 

   There it was, like a little bean in a pot. The sound of its heart was strong.

   "Hey, little guy," he said to the screen. To Bobbie, he said, "I'm gonna' rest a minute, okay?"

   "Aye, aye, Cap," She gripped his hand warmly and left.

When she was gone, he activated the abdominal ultrasound again.

It wasn’t a beat. It was a rhythmic whooshing.

He closed his eyes, falling into that sound.

_Whoosh whoosh, whoosh whoosh._

It was fast. Faster than an adult heart would be. That was supposed to be normal, though. It would get even faster over the next month, coming to about twice that of an adult and then slowing back down as the due date approached.

James imagined the breakneck pace of putting a body together, of growing into a baby boy or baby girl. It must be a lot of work. The fast heart rate made sense, even if that wasn’t necessarily the real reason.

His child would be born sooner than a child born of a woman, and it would be smaller, but it would also be more developed. It would have teeth and be able to chew food, though Jame’s body would lactate and the baby would also have milk. Thinking of that made him squirm just a little. He wouldn’t grow permanent breasts like a woman, but they would swell while the baby was nursing. What he’d read said it was akin to the way other primates develop breasts to nurse their babies, but when not nursing, their breasts disappear, going as flat as those of any male.

He hoped they didn’t swell _too_ much. He admitted to no small amount of vanity as regarded his appearance.

 _Whoosh whoosh, whoosh whoosh_.

“So, boobs, huh? Gonna’ let me play with’m?” Amos had said, joking.

“Shut up,” he’d replied, not wanting to think about it.

 _Whoosh whoosh, whoosh whoosh_.

Amos would lay his ear against the growing roundness of his stomach, hoping to hear the heartbeat, though James told him it was very unlikely yet. The baby’s heart was only just now audible to the ultrasound. Amos tried anyway, refusing to miss that first moment, that first time when he could hear it with just his ear.

 _Whoosh whoosh, whoosh whoosh_.

Bobbie treated him with curiosity, which was fine. It gave Holden a venue to voice his concerns and questions. She helped him look things up, and wrinkled her nose at the stranger parts - like sire’s milk - but he had the feeling she would have found parts of female pregnancy just as odd.

It occurred to him again and again that Alex and Bobbie were sidelining their own lives for him. Bobbie seemed all right because she had a purpose. The marine in her was appeased at having a mission, a target, and a base of operation to guard and protect.

Alex was another matter.

Holden was growing more and more concerned that Alex’s unhappiness with the situation would come to a head. He was always professional, and he wasn’t remotely slipping in any of his tasks, but he was becoming distant and reserved. He was lonely and where they were going there was little chance of any cure to his loneliness. The few settlers who had crossed the gates before the trade union clamped down emigration had mostly crossed as families.

 _Whoosh whoosh, whoosh whoosh_.

He didn’t have a clue how to address that issue. They’d ridden with him into the mouth of war, literally slaying beasts and monsters and unscrupulous scientists with evil machinations. They’d done it without complaint, with heroic resolve, and at dear cost. There had been little time to think of personal happiness with so much at stake.

“Go easy, friend. There’s folk down there.”

The sudden voice in the room sent a spike of adrenaline through James that resolved into a painful prickle along the skin of his back.

“Miller, what’s wrong? Why are you here?” James shot at the apparition.

“Couldn’t help but hear the tick-tock of James Holden’s brain.” Miller pulled his silly hat down over his forehead, forever working that Sam Spade schtick. “Me and Julie thought you might need a little reassurance.”

James raked the room with his eyes. Julie was sitting against the wall on a pulldown stool. It was the first time he had ever seen her like this, seemingly alive, though he knew full well all of this was just in his head, the result of protomolecule fidgetry.

 _Whoosh whoosh, whoosh whoosh_.

“Hi, Julie,” he said, mystified.

“Hey,” she replied.

“Why am I seeing _you_?” James asked.

Julie just shrugged and glanced at Miller who looked suddenly uncomfortable.

“Look, kid. Things are on the move and the powers that be need me to lay a few things straight with you.” Miller nervously ran his index finger and thumb along the rim of his hat. “Your current situation-” He waved fingers vaguely in the direction of James’s belly. “-that’s sorta’ my fault.”

He’d known what Miller was going to say before he said it.

“How?” he asked, his voice tense.

“Yeah, kid, we’ve played that game before, remember? Explaining it is just a bunch of empty words and doesn’t change the truth of it. The code was already there. I’m code, you’re code, we’re all just code.”

“Just code,” repeated Julie.

 _Whoosh whoosh, whoosh whoosh_.

“Okay, never mind how, _why_?”

“Yeah, that part… that part’s a little easier because the reason is simple, and harder because you’re not going to like it. The galaxy is big, and also a little empty right now. Let’s just say there’s an interest in you being fruitful and multiplying”

“So _the powers that be_ did this to me?”

Miller said, “There’s a plan…”

“There’s always a fucking plan!” Holden slammed his free hand on the chair arm. “Once - just _once_ \- I would like to be in on the goddamned plan before the plan rams an asteroid through my life.”

Two different alarms on the med-bay chair started sounding softly.

“You might want to calm down a little, Holden,” said Miller, pointing at the screens.

“This _is_ me being calm. I’m _fucking_ pregnant and I just found out that it’s _your_ fault and that yet another fucked up chain of events and hidden agendas is using me as its plaything. Trust me, Miller, all things considered, this is practically sedated.”

Julie pushed up out of the stool, came over to him, and placed a hand on his arm that was indistinguishable from a hand made of flesh and blood.

“Take care of Clarissa,” she said. “She’s going to need you and you’re going to need her. You’re not the only one going through changes.”

She flickered and was gone.

Miller was still there.

“Before you go getting too uptight with me, kid, just remember how much of a ride the powers that be have taken me on.”

And he was gone.

 


	10. Camina Drummer

 

“I want air filtration and processing records for the supply dock starting twenty minutes before the Rocinante engaged Medina Station until now. Route it to me here.”

Camina Drummer glanced at her screen, then cut daggers at the ensign who had yet to deliver the data. He was sweating, but the data populated into her screen within a few seconds.

“What are you looking for?” Fred Johnson’s bulk loomed in on her.

“This.” She pointed to several spikes along the composition graph. “Androstenone and androstadienone spike when the umbilical connects to the Rocinante and she opens her docking bay doors. It happens again here, here, for a prolonged period here when they are loading supplies, and once more here when the ship docks again and Kamal is retrieved.”

“Okay, what does that mean?” he asked.

“The spikes are _huge_ and sharp. Both compounds are pheromones that are released in large quantities by both activated alphas and omegas. These other spikes here are complex alkaloids that engage opioid receptors in the brains of alphas and omegas. This confirms what the boy said.” She crossed her arms in front of and stared at the data.

Fred’s face was impassive. “What exactly do you want to do with this information, Camina? They left.”

She turned to him and said, “Imagine this scenario - Holden and Burton find a friendly little planet on the other side of one of those gates on which to raise their babies. The math is simple. Twenty-five percent will be omegas, fifty percent will be alphas, and twenty-five percent will be regular Joes like you and me. Now imagine that these children are stronger and more resilient than the rest. Imagine these children remaining and growing in a small community of people where the introduction of these genes will amount to a founder’s effect. More alphas, more omegas. And they can’t just decide to not have more children. Once an omega is no longer nursing, they will go into heat again when their time comes.”

Fred inhaled and exhaled loudly through his nose. “A whole new planet of people in short order, huh?”

“In a couple of centuries, but yeah, that’s the basic issue.” It was the core issue on which the presence of Medina Station was founded. The gates and the planets to which they led were resources for the belt. As soon as those planets became destinations in and of themselves, places to live, then Medina Station and the Belt would be bypassed like so many desert ghost towns.

“Now imagine those children, grown, coming back through the gates, into our world, our lives.” She wasn’t sure Fred was genuinely capable of grasping the longterm repercussions. Maybe he did. Maybe he saw it as just a faster version of what they were guarding against. Maybe he understood how different it would actually be. Maybe, but probably not. Men had little memory of alphas and omegas. It was a problematic part of their history that they were too happy to shed when the population crisis had reached a tipping point and eugenics programs had been employed all over the Earth.

Women - on the other hand - they remembered. They remembered the unspeakable choices that had been made. They remembered stomping out of their male counterparts, those few men who also held the spark of creation within them. They remembered with greater shame than men did. Men were never comfortable with the idea of the hidden feminine within themselves, but women, women knew something terrible had been done out of desperate need. Men forget, but women never would. 

Camina knew and remembered because her family had held the gene. She knew that she only had to go back a few generations to find photos of men, sweaty and bedraggled, as happy as any human could be, holding the baby to which they had just given birth, looking into their beloved alpha’s eyes.

She could picture those images easily. Her physical strength and the way microgravity affected her less than most, she knew she owed that to those strange men in her family tree. She owed them, but this was still her life, her world, and she was a Belter’s Belter.

Fred Johnson just looked at her, his face sliding from impassive to old and tired. “How many wars are we going to fight?” he finally said and then walked away.

That stung.

Fred’s condescension hit too close to home. It also smelled more than a little like treason.

She swiped the data off of the screen and left the bridge to walk the drum.

* * *

 

She was a stone around which water parted. Few in Medina Station failed to recognize her, and those that did were pulled aside by friends. She made a game of seeing how well this dynamic held up as she chose paths of greater resistance. Salutes came her way from those in uniform. She returned them with razor precision.

She wound her way through the floor of the drum, its great curve arcing away and improbably up. You learned to keep your eyes down, to look in directions that made sense to the inner ear and to the mind. For someone raised in the Belt, a part of her was chagrined that she would experience the kind of disorientation one would expect from an Inner, not someone raised in the float. Still, Belters had been around for a little over two hundred years; Inners walking on balls of dirt and mud had hundreds of thousands of years of history with the idea that what goes up must come down.

She purchased a bulb of tea and sipped it contemplatively under the light of the long, thin sun. She gave the bulb back to the concessioner when she was done and continued walking, eyes down, hands clasped behind her back, taking up as little space as she could, leaving a broad wake in her path.

She found herself in at the supply docks. 

No, there was nothing in the air she could smell, the scrubbers having long since cleared the air, and the files said the pheromones and alkaloids would be next to undetectable to her very human, very run-of-the-mill nose.

Though she smiled and greeted Carol, the other woman eyed her with suspicion the entire time.

There was nothing for Dummer here. The itch that needed scratching was out there, in the slow zone, on the _Rocinante_. She commandeered a terminal and brought up exterior sensor data. There were only two trails to follow at the moment. One had to be the Rocinante. Neither ship was giving a signature that matched either as IFF or for mass and radiation profile.

She pulled up the visual inputs.She aimed the camera at the gate to home and zoomed out. There was the drive plume she expected to see. She compared it against the other sensors. Again, it did not match.

They were deliberately masking their signature.

And Fred Johnson would look for reasons not to care, to let his pet James Holden run away.

The laws of Earth and Mars were hardly her concern. The Belt had been under their thumb since the beginning. Fuck them. Fuck them right in their smug, squat faces and ugly bodies.

Why _did_ she care?

How had they found the data they needed to mask themselves from Medina Station’s sensors? Clearly they had had help. A quick perusal of the logs made it clear. What would Clarissa Mao be doing with all that much ballast except helping her old crew? Clarissa had requested a meeting with her, which she had put off as unimportant and annoying. She hadn’t wanted to deal with the woman. She regretted it now.

It was becoming personal. They had slipped in under her nose, made alliances and plans, and then slipped out again like a cat in the night. And it wasn’t that they had employed subterfuge, not until now. No, she had let it happen. She hadn’t batted an eye at the Rocinante’s presence, and that kind of blasé attitude wasn’t like her. It was a slip and Camina Drummer never slipped.

She set the optical cameras to spool a continuous recording to her quarters.


	11. Alex Kamal

 

   Three days into their leisurely teakettle along the perimeter of the hub it looked as though their subterfuge had worked. The most dangerous parts of the journey were the moments when they had to light the drive cone and there was only one more such maneuver before they slipped through their destination.

   Alex had spent the first day running different exit scenarios. The final plan was to bring the ship around to where she was flying sideways, nose to the perimeter wall, slowly reducing velocity on teakettle, then punch it just as they came into proximity with gate number three twenty-five. It was that or burn the drive twice, once to decelerate, turn, and then again to punch it. The tradeoff was the length of time they spent as the brightest, most detectable object in the hub versus how much water ballast they would keep for the other side of the gate. 

   They’d put it to a vote and gambled on the idea that they could find more water ballast on the other side.

   Five hours out from the rim of the destination, Alex hit a hard, extended blast from the starboard side jets. It was the tenth such blast and brought the ship’s lateral velocity to just over two hundred meters a second. The port aft jet hit several more small puffs and then a few from the starboard aft jet until the ship was flying cockeyed by thirty degrees, tail first. When they hit the main drive, the diagonal trajectory would cancel out their remaining lateral momentum a few kilometers before passing through the gate boundary.  

   Five hours before go time.

   “Go rest,” said James from the navigator seat. “Even if you don’t sleep, just go rest your eyes. I want you as fresh as possible when we light the tree, okay?”

   “Will do, Cap, though I’m sure I’m just going to lay there with my gears smoking.” Alex pushed away from the pilot’s panel and turned his chair to face James.

   James smiled his understanding and then said, “Have I told you lately that I love you?” 

   “Don’t go causing trouble between me and Amos, Cap,” Alex quipped back.

   The Captain held his beatific grin. “Amos loves you too, Alex.” 

   James Holden was a changed man. He’d always been an emotional creature, but this was a completely different color palette from his usual steadily brooding blues and indigos. He said part of it was neuro-chemicals, changes in his physical body, changes in Amos. What it looked like more often than not was James Holden high as a kite. 

   “Remember what Miller and Julie told me, that there are people down there?” James asked, leaning toward Alex.

   “Yeah, I remember.”

   “I was thinking about you before they appeared. I didn’t tell you that part because I don’t know how to say it except to say it and I can already see how this conversation is making you uncomfortable.” Holden sighed. “Your sacrifice is huge, and I know it doesn’t make it any different, but Amos and I see it. We see it.”

   “Cap, you don’t have to…” He was right, it was making him uncomfortable. 

   “Yeah, Alex, I do have to. That message was meant for you. Miller was worried about you. And so am I.”

   “If this is about getting drunk, I didn’t…”

   “I don’t care about that. I care about how distant and quiet you’ve been. Fuck, Alex. I know what lonely feels like. I know as well as anyone. I miss my family. I miss Naomi.” 

   James Holden was a good man. He genuinely was, but he was a man with too much gravity. He lived in a Holden-centric universe and it wasn’t that Alex blamed him because, given the way recent history had played out, a man could be forgiven for thinking the stars spun around him, but he had an infuriating habit of making everything about himself.

   “And you have Amos,” Alex cut him off.

   The captain looked a little struck by that comment. “Yeah. I have Amos.”

   Alex blew out a long breath. The captain was trying to ameliorate things with him and he wasn’t making it easy, and he didn’t want to, but Holden couldn’t help but be Holden.

   “Captain, that kid I met on Medina? Mika? He was a nice kid. When people don’t have anything - like  _really_  don’t have anything - it either turns them mean or it makes them flip over and beg for a tummy rub because meanness hasn’t worked out for them. Maybe their not big enough or tough enough, so they go the other route. If it ain’t working one way, what have you got to lose, right?”

   “Yeah, Bobbie said he seemed like a sweet kid.” 

   “He was. He  _is_. I think he had a little crush on me, which at the time felt like God sticking a middle finger in my face, what with what happened with Bobbie.” 

   James just nodded. He knew the story about Carol the redhead. 

   Alex paused, unsure where he was going with this train of thought. The memory of Mika’s easy banter with him had clung to him, popping up when he wasn’t otherwise occupied. He felt bad that the kid was stuck in that rotating tin can with little in the way of prospects, little in the way of a future. Kids like him eventually got in trouble and were made to fade out from the presence of regular, decent folk, and that was fucked up and wrong because he was the most decent person Alex had met in a long time, outside the company of his crew. 

   “And?” prompted James, pulling Alex out from inside his head.

   “And nothing. My life wasn’t exactly perfect before all this, Jim. I was a shit husband and clueless father. Whatever it was I was doing, it wasn’t working out. What have a got to lose?”

   He stared at his thumbs and the way his fingers laced together on his belly.

   “You ain’t wrong, Jim. I am lonely, but that ain’t new. That’s from before you and I ever met.” A memory of laughing with Mika shed the veil alcohol had given it and came into focus. “I think that’s why I took such a shine to that kid. He's lonely too.”

   James let a respectable amount of time pass before saying, “Alex, I can’t speak for what kind of husband or father you were, but you’ve been a damned good friend. You're my brother as far as I'm concerned and I’m not kidding, man. I love you.” His finger went from himself to Alex, and back to himself. “This is family. Now go get some rest.”

   They shared a strong handshake before Alex floated out of the bridge.

    _Family_ , he thought to himself. 

   Yes, this was certainly a family. He’d been lonely in his prior one as well.

 

* * *

 

   Against all expectation, he did sleep dreamlessly.

   It was Clarissa who woke him. 

   “Let’s go flyboy. I would do it myself but your captain won’t hear of it. 

   They passed James and Amos on their way to the med-bay to strap James into the chair again. This burn would be longer and harder. The captain looked pale, Amos reached out a hand which Alex clasped.

   “Do your thing, brother,” was all Amos said, but he squeezed Alex’s hand with astonishing strength. 

   That left Bobbie in the pilot’s chair, right where he found her. She unbuckled from the seat when they entered, signing out from the panel and moved to the tactical seat. 

   “You know what to do?” he asked her.

   “I traded my mom’s tit for a plasma rifle.” She grazed him with the side of her eye. “No one touches this lady’s ass without my permission. You ready to step on the gas?”

   “Ready as I’ll ever be. Clarissa?”

   “I’ll kill the program on your word. Full sensor capabilities will come back online immediately.” She strapped into one of the remaining seats and called up her snaky little code that had damped down the Roci’s sensory inputs and outputs in favor of its own bogus readings. “We’ll be as visible as ever and a stable target at that point.”

   Alex flicked open the comms to the med-bay, “Amos, you got James strapped in?”

   “Yeah, the Cap’s good to go. I’m strapping in now.”

   “Good, let me know when you’re in.”

   A few seconds went by. “Alright, Alex. We’re in. Light’er up.”

    “Alright, let’s dance,” Alex glanced at Clarissa and nodded the go-ahead. Her fingers ran like lightning over her panel, unplugging every module of the code. 

   “That’s it,” she said.

   Alex glanced at Bobbie. “It’s you and me, kid. Let’s go to work.”

   “Oorah! Punch it!”

   He punched it and was slammed into his chair at a thirty-degree angle. Course corrections came in tiny increments, slowly evening out the pressure and pushing him back into his seat more squarely. When the lateral velocity had been negated, the drive ratcheted up another twenty-five percent.  

   The gate opening increased in size until it was outside the forward camera field of view.

   The crash couch hit him with a wicked jolt of amphetamine, his heart racing like rabbit. 

   Through the grip of gravity gone mad, he managed to croak out, “Bobbie?”

   “Sensors clear,” she gritted.

   The lateral cameras showed them passing the lip of the gate.

   “Brace for course correction!” he growled.

   The ship tipped due south of axis as they knew it, but was actually fifteen degrees north of axis relative to the system on the other side of the gate. The ship burned for thirty more seconds then cut off, the cruel foot of thrust lifting from his chest.

   He took a moment to catch his breath, then, “Bobbie, watcha’ got?”

   “A whole lot of nothing.” A few seconds later. “We’re clear of the gate. Any shot at us would have to be from damned close or from our side and there’s nothing on the sensors showing any threat of that kind.”

   Alex thumbed the comms to the med-bay again, “Amos? You two all right?”

   “Running the Cap through a full scan, but everything looks good.”

   “Tough little motherfucker,” Alex said before he’d thought to click off the comms.

   “Hey, that’s my kid you’re talking about.” Amos sounded less than amused.

   “I meant the captain, but point taken.” He clicked off the comms and said in a hushed voice, “Well, that was anticlimactic.”

   “Really?” said Bobbie, incredulous. “You’re disappointed?”   


	12. Bobbie Draper

 

Two weeks into their journey past the rim of gate three twenty-five, Bobbie was getting into an EVA suit. A marine adores her ship. It is both vessel and home, a place as much as a person. Bobbie was no different in this respect. But just now she wished for the insane luxury of windows through which to see. Such things are, of course, the stuff of science fiction. No real ship - let alone a military ship of war - would suffer such a structural weak point. Real ships had cameras and internal screens, not windows.

But the view outside called to her as clearly as if it had a true voice.

She checked Amos’s helmet and glove seals and he checked hers, the two of them brimming with excitement. At times like this, she appreciated Amos’s quiet manner, the way he let the moment be itself without having to comment on it.

Within the first days, the ship’s sensors had charted the stars in their vicinity and determined that they had emerged at a point on the other side of the Eagle Nebula, closer to the center-facing side of the Sagittarius-Carina galactic arm. Their proximity to the Eagle Nebula had not been obvious upon first passing through because the vast majority of the formation was on the wrong side of the gate and only visible once they had passed through and could look behind.

It didn’t look at all like the images she had seen in childhood. This was the other side of the formation; the clouds of dust and brightly glowing gas made different shapes and colors in the sky than the side that could be seen from Mars. They were also somewhat to the north side of the galactic axis, which further skewed the image. The shape that gave the nebula its name was not visible, nor were the famous Pillars of Creation.

It didn’t matter in the slightest.

What showed on the screens was awe-inspiring. It filled half of everything that could be seen, meaning the gate and the system to which it led were on the very edge of the formation.

They were all captivated at first, but Bobbie’s intrigue was unabated. She had to see it for herself. She had to know that she had looked upon this sight with her own eyes, not through a screen.

She mentioned and then later carefully insisted on the need to make a visual inspection of the ship’s hull and exterior armament. No one was fooled, but the captain gave the go-ahead knowing it was to satisfy her curiosity. He told her to take Amos and to please make the inspection official and legitimate because while the EVA was clearly provoked by a wish to go sightseeing, an inspection of the hull was still a good idea.

Amos had beamed with silent delight.

“You ready?” he asked now from within the confines of his helmet. The suit barely fit him. Bobbie hadn’t realized how much the man had grown until just now. His shoulders were immense and broad.

She just smiled at him and cycled the inside airlock closed. When the light went green she hit the button to the outside airlock and the small amount of atmosphere in the chamber blew out into space. They each attached a tether line to the grapple point just outside of the airlock and activated their magnetic boots.

Even though they were in microgravity, it was still disorienting to mentally flip the exterior of the ship from side/wall to down/floor. Bobbie expertly swung out, holding the edge, curling around and pulling her feet under her, each of the boots gripping the hull with a thunk. She could then stand and leave the orientation of the airlock, which no longer held any meaning.

“Fuck me,” she said under breath.

Aft of the ship the sky was a riot of color. Predominantly shades of tan and brown, but there were peach and orange, red and magenta, niobium greens and blues. It rolled in static waves from two separate points lit from within by the lights of young fierce stars. Further out the colors were cooler, fading into indigo and then the black of space. Looking directly above and turning, Bobbie was able to observe that the nebula took up actually more than half of the visible sphere, it’s faint tendrils reaching out like fingers trying to catch them. They were actually within the extreme end of the horn that flared around them.

“Which way is Earth,” Amos asked.

She pointed. “Not exactly sure, but it’s off in that direction, on the other side of the nebula.”

“Jesus, Bobbie, that is something.” His gift for understatement was as sharp as a razor.

“You recording this?” she asked him.

He tapped buttons on his forearm console and then said, “I am now. Why?”

“So you and your hubby can watch it together in bed, ding-dong.”

He chuckled at that. “Come on. My hubby said we had to make this official, so let’s get to officializing.”

“I don't think that’s a real word, Amos,” she said, smiled at him, unclipped her tether and headed to the fore of the ship. The hull was covered in tether points and they would secure themselves in sequence as they made their inspection. Boots were great, but a solid tether line was still the best.

The _Rocinante_ had scars and there were areas where it was obvious that her hull plating had been replaced. Her history was written on her skin just like a person. _This_ panel had orange paint that was a couple of shades off from what it should be. Too red, but you don’t complain about such things when requisitioning repairs outside of a Martian installation. You just say thank you. _That_ gun turret to starboard didn’t belong on this class of ship, but it worked just fine and came at a good price, so the slight incongruity was acceptable. Amos knew each mark and replacement panel by the event and where and when they were gotten or purchased.

She was a good ship, as Martian as Bobby or Alex, though she’d been absconded by a crazy Earther captain and his Belter space-princess, and now, more recently, his hulking mechanic lover-boy.

And all of them were more than seven thousand lightyears from home flying through an alien system with a backdrop like a painting done by God. Bobbie certainly wasn’t a religious woman, but just now, under the technicolor light of the nebula, lit from within with stars newly coming to life, she could make a little room in her logical mind for the presence of God.

“Come have a look at this, Bobbie,” said Amos, pulling her from her internal revelry.

She clopped over to where he stood pointing at the hull.

“That’s not good,” he said.

“Doesn’t look like a slug or a round,” she said. “See how the edge feathers out? That was a rock.” She bent and zoomed her camera in on the impact that had almost, but not quite, punctured their outer hull. It was approximately five centimeters in rough diameter where its impact depth was greatest, but it spread wider to one side where the metal had been pushed and wrinkled. The ship should have detected the impact, even as small as this. She would have to ask Clarissa if there was any way her ad hoc coding had left sensors out of the loop. She panned the camera from starboard to port, then fore and back in order to get a recording of the location. They certainly weren’t in a position to replace the panel, so it would have to be repaired from the inside, between the hulls. The chances of hitting such a small piece of rock in the vastness of space were astronomically small, but, as they had learned many times, that which _can_ happen eventually does.

“Well, you’ve got your work cut out for you, sir. Let’s hope there aren’t any other impacts like this.”

There were no others on this side of the hull. They continued around to the keel of the ship where the length of the rail gun gleamed brightly. There was nothing to report this side of the ship other than some paint loss at the business end of the gun.

Traversing the entire keel, they circled back to the dorsal side of the ship and up to where Clarissa’s ship was docked. It was a rough little ship, and though she knew that kind of patching was par for the course on a Belter ship, the marine in her was alarmed and she shuddered at the idea of getting into anything as patchwork as that. She checked that the connections between the ballast tanks of the two ships were tight and in good condition.

Other than the small impact they’d found, the ship was as sound as ever. She turned back to the immense sight of the nebula.

“Hard to believe there’s no one but us out here. Late to the party.” She regarded the waves and crest, the hollows and promontories of gas that looked solid enough to hike.

“We don’t know that for sure. James said what he saw was that _most_ everything got burned out, not everything. Why? You ain’t had your fill of fighting space aliens?” he asked.

“I just think it’s a shame to come all this way and have no one to talk to.” She wondered what names they would give to all this, what fantastic shapes and mythical creatures they would imagine seeing in the clouds.

“Last time we ran into something that wasn’t us, it wasn’t exactly the chatty-patty type,” Amos observed.

“Where’s your sense of adventure, Amos? They can’t all be bad. I mean we’re out here, so we count too and we’re not complete shit, are we?” It was a joke but it came out rather more seriously than she intended.

“We’ve got our moments,” he replied.

They gazed quietly at the formation.

“You scared of all of this?” she asked him hoping he understood her meaning.

“Yeah, sometimes,” he replied.

“It’s all right you know, to be scared. There’s no bravery without fear.”

“Did you just make that up?” he asked.

“No, they pound it into you in training. Fear is gonna’ be there, and that’s a fact. You gotta’ get past it, over it, because pretending it doesn’t exist or doesn’t affect you is how you get dead.”

“Hard to imagine you scared of anything,” he said.

“You’d’a been a good marine, you know.”

“You think? I don’t think I have the discipline.”

“Everyone says that. Discipline isn’t what people think it is, it’s liberating. You don’t have to worry about the small shit because you’ve got it on automatic. You have it, trust me. You’re smart, and you use your ears more than your mouth.”

“Smart? I’ve been accused of lots of things, but…” he jibed at her.

“There are different kinds of smart. You’ve got the right kind.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I don’t know,” she waved an arm at the formation before them. “That whole ‘the universe is big and I’m just small’ bullshit must be making me soft.”

A few moments passed. “Yeah, it _is_ big.”

Their respective oxygen monitors gave their first warning bell, each just a second from the other.

“Time to go,” Amos said.

“Thanks for sharing this with me,” Bobbie replied.

“Thanks for getting me invited,” he replied. “And for everything you said. I appreciate it, sis.”

“Sis?” She began clomping her way back to the ship’s personnel entry airlock.

“Yeah, don’t soldiers in battle call each other brother and sister?” Amos followed behind her.

“Yes, we do,” she answered, and then a second later, “Bro.”


	13. Captain James "Jim" Holden

  **March 13th**

A genuine, real shower with hot water is a tricky affair when one is under less than a quarter-g of thrust. At around an eighth-g, it’s a good way to drown, and most ships with any sense won’t allow the crew to turn on the shower jets at that point.

The _Rocinante_ was, of course, a very sensible ship.

They had passed the orbit of the innermost of the two jovian planets, having seen neither since their orbits had the outermost planet at about ninety degrees spinward and the innermost was in near-opposition on the other side of the system. There was a thin belt of rubble in the vast space between the inner jovian planet and the third rocky planet. Unlike their home system, this belt was very thin and made up of mostly chunks of water ice and ammonia.The opportunity to refill their water ballast tanks and potable water for internal use could not be ignored. Alex found a suitable candidate that was nearly pure water ice and they changed course to intercept.

A course change meant main drive thrust.

Thrust meant the showers were usable.

The crew hemmed and hawed about who would go first and they all deferred to James, but he wanted to go last.They tried to assure him that they would wait, and in the end he had to lay it plain and tell them that last place meant he didn’t have anyone in line after him so he could take as long as he wanted, knowing the water tanks would soon be completely replenished.

Captain’s privilege.

Alex calculated a course that had them under a half-g of thrust, which was perfectly adequate for a shower, yet the water was still lazy in its course, tending to sheet across his skin rather than run in rivulets. James stood under the spray, long since clean, letting the water run down his back, leaning against the wall in front of him.

The hot water was glorious; the sudden presence of thrust-induced gravity was less glorious.

He was four months into his pregnancy with at least three more months to go, but up until then any moment of thrust they had experienced had been passed either in the med-bay chair or in his bunk’s crash couch. Standing now, knowing this was only half the weight he would feel had he been on Earth, gave him at least a small window into what all the complaining was about.

His belly was heavy and very _present_ in a way he had never experienced. The pressure on his bladder had been sharp until he’d relieved himself. He didn’t want to imagine what it would be like to feel the full weight on his bladder all of the time. That would be awful. There was always pain and soreness for anyone experiencing thrust or real gravity after having been in microgravity for any time. But this was unexpected. His knees and hips hurt. The hot water was some comfort, but the ache was significant. And his feet… The sense that all his blood was pooling into them gave him terrible fantasies of how the skin would burst.

“You okay in there?”

It was Amos. He’d been first to shower, having just finished the repairs of the hull plate where he and Bobbie had found the small impact. It was a simple repair, just a reinforcement patch from the inside of the hull, but it had meant squeezing between the hulls while inside of an EVA suit and performing the work in tight quarters. He’d stunk to high heaven afterward, and after James opted for going last, the rest of the crew happily let Amos go first.

“I’m okay, just sore,” James answered, the water sputtering off his lips.

“Open the door,” said Amos.

“I’ll be out in a bit. Seriously, I’m okay.” He didn’t want to relinquish the soothing heat just yet.

“Open the door,” Amos repeated, insistent.

James pushed himself away from the wall and popped the seal on the door. Amos leaned against the shower stall bulkhead wearing nothing but a wolfish grin.

“You already had your turn,” James said.

Amos stepped into the shower and said, “And now I’m having another.”

He tipped his head under the water and his hair quickly plastered to his head. He wiped the water from his eyes and grinned broadly, gripping James’s shoulders.

“Where does it hurt?” he asked.

“Here.” James turned and showed him the area of his back that was complaining the loudest.

Amos reached up around his chest, pulling James against him and pressed a strong thumb into the spot he’d indicated. It hurt in the best way, like poking at a bruise that was healing. He was helpless to restrain the soft moan that escaped him.

“Sweet Jesus, that feels good.”

Amos’s thumb followed the route of soreness as if it were drawn on Jame’s back. He leaned his head back onto Amos’s shoulder, letting himself be supported by his lover’s arm, Amos’s fingers splayed widely across his chest, taking up the slack, even lifting James a bit. The heavy width of Amos’s cock rose up between his legs and James spread them slightly to make room and then gripped it between his thighs.

“Closer to the wall,” James said and Amos moved them to where James could brace himself and press back against Amos’s attentions.

Amos let go for a moment, switching hands, pressing deeply into the line of ache along the other side of his spine. James danced his head under the water, letting it pour down his back, between their bodies. He slipped one hand down to where Amos’s cock protruded from between his legs, under his own erection, and rubbed a soft circle with his palm across the glans.

“Fuck, baby. Can we?” Amos rasped.

“Why are you asking?” James replied over his shoulder, dying to feel his man inside of him.

Amos’s pupils blew as wide and as quickly as a cat giving chase. The hot steamy air in the shower stall bloomed with their combined scent and the pain and soreness evaporated under its effect. James’s head swam with euphoria, his skin shimmering with a sensitivity that was heightened in detail but subdued with respect to pain. He reached again down between his legs, giving Amos’s cock a strong squeeze and fumbling the smooth orbs of his testicles within their sack that had gone slack and stretched with the heat of the water.

Amos withdrew his cock from between James’s legs, turned him around and kissed him deeply, his cock slowly tap-tap-tapping against James’s belly. His large, square hands came up under Jame’s arms, gripping his ribcage, lifting him. James wrapped his arm’s around Amos’s neck and hitched his legs around his waist. He winced when a needle of pain managed to break through the cloud of euphoria.

Amos saw and let James down. “Okay, we’ll save that for when we’re weightless. What’s better for you, daddy?”

“Floor, on the floor.”

James eased down. The stall was big enough for two so there was room enough, and with the procession of showers, the smooth plastic of the floor was as warm as the water.

“We can go back to the room…” Amos began.

“No. Here,” James insisted. The idea of breaking from the action was untenable. It had to be here, it had to be now. His body was its own being, his mind was just along for the ride. He cut the water off and locked the valve, then squatted down, leaning back, beckoning Amos onto him. 

Amos spread his knees wide on the smooth floor, taking aim. James reached around, finding Amos’s girth, guiding it home. The initial breach was stunning and James came almost immediately, hard and sharp.

“Do you need me to stop?” Amos asked, breathing heavily.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” James growled.

Amos’s eyes flicked wide at the aggression in James’s voice. He swept fingers across James’s belly where the seed had landed, taking it up and licking his fingers slowly clean. He swallowed and his eyes quivered and rolled up.

James slammed a hand into Amos’s chest, making a loud, wet smack. Amos’s eyes flicked open, huge, his nostril’s flared.

They held eye contact for a moment. James gave a feral grin that was all teeth. Somewhere deep in Amos’s chest, an inhuman rumble hit the resonance frequency of the shower stall and it vibrated in response. It caught them both by surprise, but James’s drive was not going to be distracted by something as simple as humming walls. He scooted down, taking another inch or two of the many Amos had to offer. Amos leaned in, a thick forearm under James’s neck, his elbow to the floor, and drove in with one long steady stroke.

James’s world shattered. Literally. His vision erupted in a cascade of stars and bright streaks, Amos’s lips and tongue at his neck, plying him, digging in. James threw a hand to the wall behind him to brace, the other seeking Amos’s ass, compelling him deeper.

A long, slow, unrecognizable sound escaped his throat.

 _People - humans - don’t make these sounds_ , he thought.

— _But they do, beautiful child_ , came the response from deep within a primordial cave in his mind.

As always, she was darkly green as moss and just as wet. She was the grotto in a cliff by a river where it rained often. She was not Miller or Julie. She was not a person. And she didn’t speak in words, just feelings, or maybe she was speaking in the code Miller said was all we were. Maybe she was that, or maybe none of it. All James knew is that she was there in his mind when he and Amos made love. Sometimes she was there in his sleep too, but now, entwined with Amos, she never missed that. He had not understood her presence at first. She had just been images chalked up to the giddiness of the multiple orgasms Amos promised and always delivered.

_This is crazy._

 _— This is life,_ she said.

_I’m scared._

_— Why? Your man is proud and strong and so very fine. He will protect you always._

Sometimes it scared him how big Amos was, knowing that if he had a mind to, he could crush James with just his arms. But that strength was never used against James, not unless he requested it. Sometimes he wanted to be held so hard it hurt, and Amos knew just how hard he could squeeze without harming him.

_I don’t know what’s going to happen._

— _Life_ , she replied.

_Who the fuck are you?_

_— I am you._

_Who am I?_

_— You are here and you are treasured._

The stall faded back into existence with a granular, electric sensation running across his entire skin, Amos between his legs, his arms spread wide to both sides of the stall, slowly, smoothly thrusting into and out of him. His massive chest heaved, his head tipped back, his jaw went slack, and he sank in to the hilt, shuddering. The first pulse was a wave at a warm beach, knocking James into the surf. Heat spread through him, molten and thick. It was both burn and balm at the same time, scalding him, feeding him. It spread from his belly to his chest to his shoulders and into his head, hissing softly like hot sand. He shook under the awesome power of the man who held him and filled him with burning light. He laughed and sobbed and Amos’s hand came to his cheek, seeking his lips, breathing into him, sustaining him, filling in the holes that life had dug out of his soul.

There was no knowing how much time had passed. Amos had slipped out from inside of him and rolled to the side of the narrow stall, his pupils were still so blown that there was almost no iris to be seen. James imagined his own eyes must look the same and he was amazed at the detail he could see. The fine lines of Amos’s face, the individual strands of hair on his forehead, the soft, normally imperceptible fuzz that ran down his neck. He stroked James’s belly with the backs of his fingers but his eyes were a million miles away. He glanced at James’s a split second before the thrust cut out and they were weightless.

“I guess that’s our cue,” said James.

“Guess so,” answered Amos.


	14. Mika

 

True to expectations, Mika’s fame faded, and with it went Grigori.

He came back a few times over the next month, having nowhere else to go, and Mika had accepted his company, feeling used but too lonely to refuse. The bright, heady days after the Rocinante had ducked out to parts unknown were gone.

He sat next to what would have been a park under Mormon hands and gazed out into the empty space. There should have been people in that space, doing business, trading, making deals, but the exit of the Rocinante had brought about a tightened grip by the more radical fringes of the Free Navy, or at least parts of it. It was all rumors and gossip and Mika heard insanely far-flung versions of what had happened, some of which even included him. Few knew the real story or the name of the ship that had kicked this nest of cockroaches open. Mika was one of those people. It scared him that others would know and target him, blame him, hurt him. Many of his friends thought the same and avoided him. Grigori was one of them.

Traffic into Medina Station ran down to a trickle and few who now came were of the type to look for anything Mika might have to offer. The Free Navy had to bring in supplies. No one asked where they came from. Distribution was tied to favors and friendships, and Mika had little to offer and his friends had vanished into the corridors. He wasn’t the only one in the same situation, but where others pooled their resources, Mika found no one with whom to partner.

He couldn’t pay for a ride off the station and he couldn’t stay here.

 _Imim ta pashang mi_ , he thought.

Well and truly fucked.

He hadn’t eaten in days. His stomach was a raw bruise inside his body. Every now and again a fluttering panic would rise in his chest that he was going to die like this, just a bunch of bones and some rags, but the panic had a hard time competing with the cloudiness in his mind from hunger.

Today, though, he had a half-assed plan. More like a quarter-assed plan, really. He knew when Camina Drummer would make her methodical route through the drum, her expression turned forever inwards, no one daring to speak to her. But Mika was desperate and had nothing to lose.

He waited at the edge of the _should-have-been_ park, nearly dozed off, and then there she was, hands clasped behind her back, intently marching. He got up and made a line to intercept her.

She caught him out of the corner of her eye and pegged him with a stony stare.

“ _Oye, Drummer, fadagut…_ ”

“ _Ke?_ ” she snipped back, sharp as a razor.

“ _To xalte ere gova mi?_ ” It was a stupid question. Of course she remembered him. It was stamped in her hostile expression.

But to his surprise, she softened after a second and said, much less caustically, “ _Ya. Mi xalte ere gova to. Mika._ ”

“ _Ya, ya, Mika,_ ” he said, tuning down the nervous over-enthusiasm mid-sentence.

“ _Keting to du mowteng fo?_ ” she asked him, giving him the once over.

That was the question; what _did_ he need?

“Mi gonna’ die here. _Mi du showxa wit to_ , now nobody _du showxa wit mi._ ” Just then his stomach let out a painfully audible growl. “ _Mi wanya go._ ”

“I cannot make a ship take you away when there are no ships,” she said in cleanly condescending Earther English.

Two could play that game.

“Do something. Rocinante come and Rocinante go. _To du nating_. She leave and only Mika know why. _To ta du mowteng fo kom fo mi fo finyish sasa_ .”

Her gaze turned inward for a moment, but she stayed. She could have just walked off, but she stayed.

“Your English needs work,” she said.

“ _Pashang lang inglish,_ ” he spat.

But that got a crooked smile from her.

“Maybe you can help me,” she said.

“ _Oye, to _du xep__   _mi_ ,” he countered.

“Ya. I help you, but you help me too. Nothing is free. You really make friends _wit da pomang_  Alex?” she asked.

“Ya! Mi got fucked up _wit pampa_.”

“ _Pampa? Tolowda ta du pashang wit sif ke?_ ”

“ _Na_ ,” he said. “ _Mi du pegunta, amash im na wanya wit mi_.”

“You help him get supplies, _ya_? You know who to talk to?”

“ _Da we!_ ” he replied, and then, “Drummer, _fodagut, du xep.”_

She nodded her head, telling him to follow her. She didn’t wait to see if he tailed her, just started off marching. It was clear that she wasn’t going to check, assuming he had no choice, which, in truth, he did not. She trekked him clear to the other side of the drum, the drive end, and found a staff main computer station behind a sealed panel that opened to her palm print. She typed through several screens of information and a clear, slim hand terminal slid out from a slot.

She handed it to him.

“You know how to use?” she asked.

He shook his head. He’d never owned one. His life was made of barter and sexwork for cash. She took his hand and held his thumb on the button at the bottom of the terminal. It read his print and took a scan of his face. Now it was his. She showed him how to access the account she had created for him. The symbols were easy to parse, for which he was thankful because he could not read. Numbers made sense and so did symbols and icons, but not words.

She just nodded when he told her that. “I know,” she said.

There was money in the terminal. _Money!_ And here she became grave again in her expression.

She typed many words that became a series of pictures on the screen. The money was to buy these things. The pictures he understood, he knew what those things were.

“You helped the duster, now you help me. You help me, we go away from here.”

“ _Kepelésh?_ ” he asked, guarded, scared of what the answer might be.

“To find our friends on the Rocinante,” she replied in a hushed voice.

That was not remotely the answer he was expecting.

She cocked one eyebrow upward. “Deal, _o ke?_ ”

“Deal,” he replied.

“Tomorrow, same time, I come find you. Be in your room with these things,” she pointed again at the screen in his hand.

He turned to point to the section where his room was located, but she took him by the shoulder and turned him back to her.

“I know where you stay. Mika, _si to na wanya_ , tell me now and the deal is off. Tomorrow if I don’t find you in your room with these things, you’re gonna’ find a very different way off Medina Station, and you’re not gonna’ like it.”

He swallowed hard at the obvious implication of getting spaced out of an air hatch. She was Camina Drummer; who would question her?

“ _Na, bosmang_. Deal is deal.  _Milowda ando go_.”

She tipped her head slightly at him in agreement then placed a finger to her lips. He nodded back his understanding. It was to be their secret.

She held his gaze, letting him feel the full weight of her seriousness and that her threats were certainly not idle.

Then she headed off, tossing over her shoulder, “Get some food. Eat. But don’t be stupid.”


	15. Clarissa Mao

 

**March 24th**

“Don’t burn the heating unit for more than ten minutes at a time, and give it at least a five-minute break in between.” Clarissa had already given Alex the instructions earlier, but she was concerned that he was too accustomed to ships that could, on occasion, do more than their stated specs. The _Pashang Fong_ was not such a ship. The heater was intended for emergency situations, not refilling the ballast tanks of something like the _Rocinante_.

“Copy that,” was all Alex said.

She flicked off the comms button. “He’ll fry the ship’s power core if he doesn’t keep it under ten minutes,” she said softly, hoping that underselling it with James would be more effective than overstating it. He didn’t respond well to pressure lately.

He sighed through his nose and clicked the comms himself. “Alex, that’s not a joke. Ten minutes, no more.”

“I said _copy that_ ,” Alex responded. “To be fair, I think ten minutes is pushing it. This bucket’o bolts must have been one of the very first ships to ever hop a rock. Her name may be Belter, but all her panels are in Spanish.”

She saw James eyeing her from her peripheral vision. “She’s a good ship. She’s not pretty, but she gets the job done,” she said before he could say anything. “And I speak Spanish.”

“Making contact with the surface in five, four, three, two, one. Contact.” There was a pause, and then, “Grapples in place and holding. The surface appears to be solid enough. Extending heater and intake.”

She flipped to internal comms. “Amos, it’ll be half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes before Alex brings the first load. Have you got the coarse particulate and ammonia filters in place?”

Amos’s voice came through the speaker, “I’m on it. We’ve only got so many cee-pee filters. Gonna’ have to bang’um out after each delivery otherwise we’re gonna’ go through all of them.”

She looked over to James. It was his ship and she didn’t want him thinking that she thought any different.

“Do what you need to, Amos. I trust you.”

They sat in silence for several uncomfortable minutes. It was frustrating because there was no getting mad about it. They’d all been given the roles that best suit them for the task, James being the one to realize it would be her and himself to monitor the mission. Alex wanted to get a feel for the small ship before they arrived at their planetary destination, which made good sense, and left Amos as the obvious choice for physically monitoring the intake and filtering, and Bobbie as the strongest to couple and uncouple the ballast tanks of the two ships.

Still, though he’d chosen it himself, his tone had been one of sufferance.

“How are things with you?” she broached carefully. It was the question she used whenever things got uncomfortable between her father and one of his clients or associates. Her mother had taught her that trick, how best to both acknowledge the discomfort of the moment and politely request a bridge to a different topic. She’d shown her that her place by her father’s side wasn’t just as a pretty ornament - anyone could do that - but as a navigator, a master of currents and tides, guiding things in the right direction, and making it seem like it was all just nature taking its course. 

“We’re never going to be friends,” was his response.

She had expected it. He’d grown recalcitrant even with Amos these last couple of weeks, his mood a mercurial, shifting beast.

“I know,” she said with a tone devoid of flippancy. “But we’re here and we have things to do and if this is remotely as uncomfortable for you as it is for me, and I assume it’s actually more-so, then that’s not pleasant and neither of us should have to suffer that. Can we at least be civil? Didn’t we achieve at least a little bit of civility before I left?”

Seconds ticked into minutes. He inhaled deeply and let it out. “Yeah, we did. And I was the one who came looking for you, so… Look, some of this is just me, what’s going on with me and Amos, and I know that you felt something for him. I don’t know if you still do, but you did. You know it’s true.”

Ah, a point of entry. It had to be acknowledged and reciprocated.

“Yes, I don’t think there’s much point in lying about _that_ ,” she said. She thought for a moment. How much was she willing to say or admit to herself? “I was broken. He wanted to protect me while I put myself back together. But that’s all he wanted. He didn’t want the fixed version of me. Well, as fixed as anyone ever is.”

The suggestion of a grin tapped James’s lips.

“You’re his whole world right now,” she said. “I’ve been crazy, but never stupid, and only an idiot would stand in the way of that beam of light.”

Her smile said _I’m sorry_.

His eyes said _I know, but still_.

And then, the chimera that was James Holden shifted again. He slapped his knees softly and said, “Okay, what do you want to know?”

An olive branch. A small one, but it had to be accepted graciously.

She focused on him. “Is there much discomfort? My mother loved to recount all the trials and tribulations of carrying me. I was a big baby. Nine pounds.”

“As long we’re not under thrust, I just feel the difference in the shape of my body. I’ve always been really thin, and I didn’t know that gaining weight was something you would feel. I thought it would just feel the same, but it doesn’t. And I have to pee a lot.”

That had been her mother’s favorite complaint. It was the kind of thing you could drop into a conversation and get a laugh, shift the mood. It made Clarissa smile just thinking about it.

He continued. “And ever since the change really made itself known, the few times we’ve been under thrust have made me very thankful for microgravity.”

“Do you know yet, what the baby will be?” she asked.

“I do. But it turns out Amos is a sucker for this kind of thing and he doesn’t want to know, so I haven’t said anything and I’m going to keep that one to myself, for his sake.”

“Fair enough,” she said with as much warmth as she could muster. “It doesn’t really surprise me, though, that he wants to be surprised. I think you know how he feels about kids.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Can you feel it move yet?”

“Sometimes I think I can. It’s just about the right time for it to be possible, but I’m not always sure.”

“Will you hate me, well, _more_ if I tell you I think the weight looks good on you?” She nodded gently. “It does.”

He grinned and turned his head partially away in embarrassment.

The comms clicked and Alex said, “Ballast tanks are full and I’m ready to bring’er in. Copy.”

She answered, “Copy that. Bobbie, you ready?”

Bobbie answered, “I’m at the hatch and exiting now.” The panel showed the personnel hatch open and close. “Hatch sealed. I’m tethered and secure, Alex. Ready when you are.”

She set the partial docking sequence. “Alex, exterior docking cycle is set.”

“Copy that,” he replied.

There was a change in the corner of her eye. Something that hadn't been there before, now was.

Julie waved her delicate hand, her pretty smile, the one she rarely wore, sparkled.

“Clarissa…” James began.

“You see Julie, don’t you. Tell me you see her,” she whispered without moving her head.

“I see her,” James replied. “Do you see a goofy-looking string bean of a guy in a dopey hat?”

“Hey,” came the unexpected protestation from the far wall of the bridge.

Clarissa turned her head. The man was Belter tall, Belter lean. He was older, or maybe just rode hard and put up wet. He did a practiced little flip of the rim of his hat with two fingers.

“So that’s Miller?” she asked.

“You see him?”

“I do. I thought you said he only ever appears when you’re alone,” she added.

“This is the first time it’s ever happened like this.” James made to unbuckle himself from his chair.Miller bid him stay with a smooth gesture of the hand and a wink.

“Special dispensation. One time offer. Time is time and time again, final call, connection end,” said Miller.

She looked to James who only shrugged his mutual incomprehension.

“He talks like this when the connection’s bad. In the hub, he’s lucid; out here…” He tapped his temple and swirled his finger away.

She turned to her sister, and in a resoundingly broad, penetrating, disturbingly mechanical voice, Julie said, “Celadon.”

And she was gone. So was Miller.

Her heart beat fierce and hard as the reaction of the moment caught up with her. She breathed through it but still broke out in a prickly sweat.

“What the fuck,” she heard James exhale.

“It’s a color. Celadon is a kind of green,” she said.

“Yeah, I know that. I mean, _what the fuck_ everything _else_ that just happened?”

The Rocinante rang audibly when then _Pashang Fong_ docked against her. A few minutes later Bobbie’s voice came through the speaker. “Connection secure to filtration ports.”

They were too stricken to answer. It was Amos who came on the speaker next. “Hey, Cap, everything okay up there?” When the response was not forthcoming, he clicked in again, “Jim, what’s wrong?”

Clarissa gestured with her eyes for him to answer the comms.

“Fine, we’re fine. I’m fine. Running the pumps now.” His fingers danced nervously over the screen and began the pump sequence.

“Peaches?” Amos’s voice said he was completely unconvinced.

“Sorry, we were talking something out. We’re fine, Amos. I’m passing control of the pumps to you. As soon as the transfer is complete, check the cee-pee filter and let us know if it can handle another pass.”

“All right,” said Amos, sounding like a parent who had just been obviously lied to. “You two behave.”

With the comms off she looked back to James. “You said he talks like that when the connection’s bad?”

“Yeah, it was always weird riddles and puzzles until we got into the hub, then he could speak like a normal person, but until then, it was always a fucked up game trying to figure out what he wanted to tell me, and he only ever showed up when he had something important to say.”

“He said _connection end_ and _one time offer_. I think we’re not going to get another visit for a while,” she said.

“Yeah, that sounds like a good deduction, but _celadon_ , what the hell does that mean?”

She shook her head. She was too shaken from seeing her sister to try to logic out the meaning.

James tapped up definitions and cross-references, looking for something, finding nothing.

“Hey guys,” Amos clicked in. “Filter looks good to go. There was hardly anything. Past the surface grime, that comet must be pretty damned clean. Bobbie, filtration is locked down from this end. Disconnect whenever you’re ready.”

“Copy that,” she responded.

“The dress for my debut party was celadon,” Clarissa said when James turned back to her.

“You had a debut party?”

“I had a debut party to end all debut parties. Heads of state, the Martian ambassador, Dom Perignon served as though it were water and the cleanest cocaine known to man. Yeah, I had a debut party. I was invested in my role. My sister, however…” She gestured to the space where the specter of her sister had been.

“How would that have anything to do with now?” he asked, his brow drawn into a chasm of furrows.

“I don’t know. I’m just… I don’t know.” She didn’t know what she was saying or why. She took a moment to collect herself. “I just saw my sister for the second time since she died. I don’t know what to think.”

“If it’s any consolation, the fact that we saw them at the same time finally lets me know I’m not crazy.”

“Or it means we’re both crazy,”

James laughed, then so did she. It grabbed her from the inside and she was thankful to have a release for the tension.

Alex made two more trips to the comet, leaving both the _Rocinante_ and the _Pashang Fong_ filled to capacity. When the final maneuver was completed and the crew was all back aboard, James called them to the bridge where he asked her to recount what had happened.

“And then she said _celadon_ and they both disappeared,” Clarissa said, closing out the story. 

“That’s a color,” said Bobbie.

James nodded and said, “We know, but we don’t know what it means.”

“So what do we do with _that_?” asked Amos.

“No clue, but that’s what happened and you know Miller’s history. Just... keep your eyes open.”

 

* * *

 

**April 17th**

The mystery remained unsolved for three weeks.

It was Bobbie’s shift at the helm when she asked everyone to come to the bridge. Clarissa was just waking up. She responded and made her way up the ship. Alex and Amos were already there. James floated in just behind her.

“We’re close enough now to see the planet with the two moons, the one we’re hoping will be our new fort for a while. I had a hunch so I started recording a couple of days ago. The images are clear enough now that I don’t think there’s too much argument.” She swept the recording to the larger screen on the side wall and ran through a sequence of magnification and enhancement.

The planet resolved with just a hint of blur to the edges, in soft focus. It was deep blue and brown and shades of purple with very Earth-like white cloud formations. The orbit of one of the two moons had just transected in front of the planet. She tapped its pale blue shape and the screen gave tentative specs concerning its size, orbital speed, distance from the planet.

“That’s Blue Kazoo,” Bobbie said. The name appeared under the image of the moon.

“We’re not calling it that,” responded James grumpily. He looked like he had also been sleeping and was annoyed.

“No one’s named it or claimed it yet. It’s Blue Kazoo,” Bobbie said. “But don't get too hung up on that; it gets better.” 

She ran the recording at high speed. The clouds on the planet’s surface swam wildly and Blue Kazoo rotated back into shadow. Its twin came into view.She paused the recording and tapped the screen again.

“ _That’s_ the real show,” Bobbie said, her arms crossed in front of her, smug as you please. "The name's still up for grabs."

The moon hung halfway across the face of the planet, a softly pearlescent celadon green.

 


	16. Amos Burton

**May 25**

“Whaddaya’ say, hoss?” asked Alex from the pilot’s seat of the _Pashang Fong_.

“I say that this thing was never made for someone _my_ size, that’s for damned sure.” Amos was wedged into what should have been the navigator or copilot seat, but it was a seat in only the most abstractly technical of definitions. An eleven-year-old girl might not have had an issue, but for someone of Amos’s size, it was a joke more than anything.

Alex tapped the comms. “Bobbie, you still got that signal?”

“Copy that, Alex. Same as before. Faint, but coming from the side directly facing the planet,” she replied.

The surface of the moon was unnaturally smooth and without features to speak of. The only change was in the swirling, bewitching ripples of color that were something like both a pearl and an opal.They still hadn’t named it. There was too much weight and portent for anything like that. Naming it meant deciding its nature and that was the one thing they did not know. 

Amos tried the ship’s receiver. Finally, he saw the tiny spike on the otherwise flat line of the antique oscilloscope.

“I got it,” he said. “Stay on the same course, Alex. I’ll let you know if it fades.”

The tiny ship continued on, kilometers of the moon’s surface zipping by, but readings were hard to ping off the surface so they used Doppler shift with the _Rocinante_ as the fixed point to determine distance.

“Spike’s getting bigger,” he told Alex.

“You really think settlers came to this moon rather than the planet?” Alex asked.

“I don’t know shit about shit, to be honest.” The spike grew steadily taller on the o-scope, the ship’s small sensor array, if you could call it that, finally in range to make communication at least plausible. “I think we can send a message now.”

“Well, I don’t speak alien, so here’s hoping they’ve got universal translators or something,” Alex switched to the incoming frequency and tapped out a message followed by audio. “Uh… pretty green moon, this is the _Pashang Fong_ requesting to know if there’s anyone down there that answers to _human_.”

“Really?” Amos asked him.

Alex shrugged. “I ain’t never chatted up an alien moon. I figure _friendly_ is the safest bet.”

There was no response. The spike grew steadily. There were some unsaid things making the space inside the ship even more cramped than it already was.

“I haven’t been real friendly with _you_ lately, brother,” said Amos.

Alex’s lips bunched up before replying. “Yeah, I _had_ noticed. Your plate’s been real full, though.”

“That’s a nice way to let me off the hook, man, but it don’t excuse me being an ass to you.”

“Bobbie told me it was just hormonal. Just part of whatever it is that’s going on between you and the captain,” Alex glanced at him from the corner of his eye.

“Yeah, its mostly that. It still ain’t right, though.”

The signal pegged at the maximum of the oscilloscope’s ability to display it. “Try that message again, man.”

Alex replayed the recording and the digital message. A minute later there was a crackle from the ship’s tiny speaker, and a woman’s voice said, “ _Pashang Fong_ , sounds to me like you’ve got a case of the _pomang_ flu.”

They eyed one another. Despite the use of the Belter epithet, the accent was decidedly Earther.

“That little go-cart would never have made it this far,” said the Earther woman speaking from the alien celadon moon. “Where’s your real ride?”

Amos answered. “She’s parked close by. The _Rocinante_. Heard of her?”

“There isn’t a human alive in _any_ solar system who hasn’t heard of the _Roci_. What is a Martian gunship doing here?” Her voice had become chill and tight.

“We come in peace,” said Alex, and Amos died a little inside.

He took the comms. “If you know my ship, then you know my crew. I’m Amos Burton. We’re not here to make any trouble. We’re actually looking for a place to lay low for a while.”

The static was filled with silence on the other end, and then, “You can’t hurt us from out there, but I’m gonna’ need some _bona fides_. Mr. Burton, you once almost beat a young man to death. What did you use to do it?”

“This before or after I joined the _Roci_?”

“After.”

He thought for a second. “Well, there’s still more than one occasion, but I’m gonna’ go with can of chicken meat.”

_How the hell would she know that?_

More silence and then the woman came back, sounding less hostile, more professionally rigid. “Pay attention to your external cameras. It’s the only thing that’s going to work, _Pashang Fong_. You’re going to see a red light on the surface.”

“Got it,” said Alex, pulling it up. A bright red glow could be seen approaching them.

“Kill your thrust now and teakettle the rest of the way. The door won’t open with anything as energetic as an Epstein drive within about five kilometers,” she said.

“Copy that,” replied Alex. He flipped the ship around and hit the drive for just a second. Amos was pressed into his cubby hole and then they coasted slowly the rest of the way.

The red light grew and became a glowing ring approximately two hundred meters in diameter.

The woman’s voice came through the speaker again. “There won’t be any atmospheric outgassing, so just bring her in dead center, feet first, no more than ten meters per second.”

“Copy that,” Alex said. He thumbed the comms to mute and grumbled, “You ain’t gotta’ tell me to bring her in feet first. I know how to fly. I know how to land a ship on a planetary body.”

Amos leaned his head back and side-eyed Alex. “How do you know that mute button works?”

Alex stared at the button like it was a snake, but nothing came over the radio but more static. He busied himself with turning the ship, killing their remaining thrust and dropping them down.

“When do the doors open?” Alex asked over the radio.

“Point your cameras down. You’ll see,” came the reply.

There was no door. Nothing actually opened. The surface of the moon within the ring of red light simply faded out and was gone.The lower deck was fifty meter below.

Alex glanced at Amos.

“Do it, man. We didn’t come _not_ to stay,” he urged.

Alex flipped back to ship-to-ship comms. “ _Rocinante_ , we have positive communication and an invitation to land.”

“Copy that,” said Bobbie. “We heard all of it this side too. Be careful.”

* * *

  

On the screen, the door that wasn’t a door, and was now the roof, solidified overhead. The light within the chamber came from everywhere and nowhere, seemingly sourceless. Within minutes the _Pashang Fong_ read that there was atmosphere outside. Fourteen p.s.i.

“Put your headgear on, just in case,” Alex said.

Amos frowned but nodded agreement. He hated helmets, but it was the smart thing to do.He nodded for Alex to pop the hatch and go first. It would be a lot easier to let the smaller man out first than try to clamber over him.

The huge bay was the same color as the surface, though the opalescent shimmer and play of light in the walls were much more subtle. There were several other ships of various and sundry ilk in the space. They were all small, like the Pashang Fong, which left the mystery of where their larger ship might be.

From a hemispherical opening in the far wall, a small group of people approached. They had the bouncy stride typical of Martians, which was hard to reconcile because this moon was much smaller than Earth’s moon. Amos made a restrained test hop. Alex looked at him curiously.

“This feel about like Martian gravity to you?” Amos asked.

Alex did his own test hop and his face screwed up in confusion.

“Yeah, that’s…”

“Not right,” finished Amos. “Should be a whole lot less.”

“Just a hair less than Mars,” said the woman at the head of the group. Hers was the voice they had heard over the radio on the ship. “About thirty-two percent of Earth’s gravity.”

Her build confirmed that she was definitely from Earth. A petite blond with her hair pulled into a tight ponytail. She was pretty, with large blue eyes that slanted just a bit, giving her a feline appearance.

“How?” asked Amos.

She shrugged, surprisingly in the Belter manner, and said, “Feel free to toss your guess into the hat on that one. You’re Burton, right?”

“Amos, yeah,” he said.

“Then I’m guessing you’re Alex Kamal.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She smiled at his show of politesse. “Please forgive how this is going to sound, but I need you to hand over any weapons you have.”

Alex put his hands up as if preparing for a pat-down. “You’re free to check the ship and this uniform doesn’t really leave much to the imagination, so…”

“I see,” she said and then glanced at Amos.

“I prefer to keep things simple,” he said, turning his hands back and forth.

“Okay,” she said.

None of the rest of the group had spoken. Amos took a mental note of them. Two other women, one dark-skinned, Earther, the other clearly a belter with smooth, glossy black hair and her features and coloring were a blend of many different things. The last was an older man, perhaps Martian, hard to tell, but he looked like he could be kin to Alex.

“So, can we send a message to our ship that we’re good, or is this where you explain what kind of hostages we are?” Amos asked.

“No hostages or prisoner here, Mr. Burton. That’s a hassle we don’t need. If you want to go, you’re free to get back in that ship and leave. I’ll clear the opening personally if you’d like. But I’m guessing you didn’t come all this way just for a _hi_ and _goodbye_. You mentioned something about laying low?”

Alex said, “Yeah, but, it’s not the kinda’ thing that should attract trouble. It’s more of a personal nature.”

She gave him a hard stare. “There’s nothing made by a human that could harm us in here. Perhaps the original builders might have had such weapons, but as far as we can tell, _we_ do not. I’m not worried about outside trouble. I wouldn’t have let you in otherwise. But in here… We’ve already suffered deep loses. I won’t permit any more.”

Amos scanned the room, which, other than the few other small ships of equal or greater antiquarian value to the _Pashang Fong_ , was empty and devoid of features. That didn’t mean there weren’t weapons and if they had learned to operate the door, what else had they learned to make work?

“Mr. Burton, I didn’t mean that as a threat, but…”

Amos cut in. “Do you have a name? I assume you’d object to _ponytail lady_.”

The dark-skinned woman stifled a laugh.

“Martha Swinton,” she said, flushing slightly.

“Excellent, Martha, I got an itch that needs scratching. How did you know what to ask me, about punching that guy? How do we know each other?”

“We don’t, Mr. Burton.” She gestured for them to follow the little welcome party. “But we have a friend in common.”

 

* * *

  

They walked for more than half an hour. The corridor was as featureless as the bay where they had left the ship, the light just as defuse and sourceless as before. The way the ceiling curved, it was impossible to know if the tunnel turned or went straight ahead.

“These guys were minimalists,” Alex said to the walls. “I wonder what this place was. Do you know?”

“Near as we can tell, it was an interspecies hospital,” replied the Belter woman whose name they now knew was Petra. The other Earther woman was Nadine, and the man, who indeed was Martian, was improbably named Ted.

“Or a vacation spa or a hotel or none of the above,” said the Martian. “Or all of them at the same time. The only part we’re sure of is that more than one species of being used this facility.”

“How do you know?” asked Alex.

“Chairs,” said Martha. “There are many other clues and data we’ve managed to access that confirms it, but chairs were the first clue. There are at least seven different kinds for clearly different morphologies. There are some smaller variations that may just be style or other things, but seven that are clearly distinct.”

They came to a wall, a dead end in the tunnel. Martha described the shape of a circle with her palm to the side wall. The dead-end faded just as the door on the surface had.

“We found the surface door open when we came. When the original inhabitants evacuated, they must have left it that way. We discovered how to open and close the doors by accident after we landed inside the dock.”

“Why’d you come here instead of the planet?” Alex asked.

“We did go there first. We had to leave,” said Nadine cryptically.

They entered a corridor running perpendicular to the one from which they emerged. They traveled only a short distance to the left when Martha opened another door on the far opposite side. It opened into another large space, as large as the docking bay, but with a ceiling that was roughly five meters up.

There were people. Two children ran by giggling. Amos’s eye followed them until he saw something that struck him as hard as any fist had ever landed.

Naomi Nagata.

**_Fin_ **

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you made it this far, the gratitude I feel for your time and consideration of my work is more than words can express. This story is part of a continuing series following the crew of the Rocinante through a universe that’s stranger and more complex than any of them could predict. Stay tuned. More to come.


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